Household Expenditure Survey 2007/08: How many poor people i
-
Household Expenditure Survey 2007/08: How many poor people in Singapore?
Thursday, 3 December 2009, 9:09 pm | 526 views
Latest:
Yong Vui Kong’s lawyer, Mr M Ravi has replied to DPP, Jaswant Singh’s letter seeking to set aside the High Court’s stay of execution for Vui Kong. In his letter to the DPP, Mr Ravi said “there are specific procedures for filing an appeal against a decision of the High Court and under section 46 the trial judge should record in writing the grounds of his decisions. We do not consider the letter from the Deputy Public Prosecutor meets the requirements of the Act.” (Read Rachel Zeng’s blog here.) (You can join the Facebook group in support of Vui Kong’s lawyer, M Ravi, here.)Leong Sze Hian
I refer to the report “Average monthly household expenditure for 2007/08 up 2.7per cent vs 2002/03 (CNA, Dec 2).How many poor people are there in Singapore?
I believe we have never done any detailed studies on the poverty line, or who are those in poverty.
Well, the Department of Statistics’ Report on the Household Expenditure 2007/08 released on 2 December, may offer some clues to the answers to these questions.
Although this may be somewhat arbitrary, we could set some parameters to help us interpret the data. Let us define households with a monthly income below $1,000 as ‘poor’, and those earning between $1,000 to $1,999 as ‘relatively poor’.
Let us also note that for households within the 1st – 20th and 21th – 40th income quintiles, Housing and Related Expenditure took up the highest proportion of their total expenditure. As such, their disposable income (after paying for housing) may be much less than their total income.
The total number of households in 2007/08 was 1,091,339.
By the above parameters, 9.7 per cent (105,965) of total households can be considered ‘poor’, while 10.6 per cent (116,092) fall into the ‘relatively poor’ category.
11.7 per cent of total households spend below $1,000 a month, while 19.9 per cent of total households spend between $1,000 to $1,999 a month.
In the past decade, the bottom 20 per cent of households by income have had to increase their spending.
In 2007/08, this bottom 20 per cent consisted of 218,280 households. They spent an average of $1,760 per month.
This represents an increase from $1,693 in 1997/08 and $1,690 in 2002/03.
Thrifty elderly?The elderly seem to be able to spend less and earn less, as they get older.
For example, out of 78,116 households whose Main Income Earner is aged 65 and over, just over half (50.3 per cent) spend below $1,000 a month.
58.2 per cent of such households earned less than $1,000 a month.
Of the 45,197 households whose main income earner is aged between 60 to 64, over a quarter (25.9 per cent) have a monthly expenditure below $1,000.
Within this category, 27.1 per cent of households have a monthly income less than $1,000.
Spending more while earning less
The report’s Key Findings – Household Expenditure, says that even the lowest 20 per cent of households had to spend more over the last few years – their expenditure grew at 1.1 per cent per annum from 2002/03 and 2007/08.In 1997/8, the Average Monthly Household Expenditure (AMHE) of this lowest 20 per cent of households was $1,693.
This figure fell to $1,670 in 2002/3, but increased to $1,760 in 2007/8.
What this means is that AMHE for this group actually declined by 0.3 per cent per annum from 1997/8 to 2002/03, and increased by only 0.4 per cent per annum from 1997/08 to 2007/08.
But to put this in perspective, we can compare the above numbers to the Average Monthly Household Income (AMHI) for the same group – the lowest 20 per cent of households.
In 1997/8, this group’s AMHI stood at $1,309. By 2002/3, it had fallen to $1,104 – a decrease of 3.4 per cent per annum.
Although it was to climb to $1,274 in 2007/8, the AMHI for these households still went through a decline by 0.3 per cent per annum from 1997/8 to 2007/8.
So, they earned less, but had to spend more.
More startlingly, we can see that, throughout this period, the income for these households could not cover all their expenditure.
In 1997/8, their income only accounted for 77 per cent of their expenditure. This fell to 66 per cent in 2002/3, before rising to 72 per cent 2007/08.
Finally, consider this statistic – 105,965 households earn below $1,000 a month. Against this backdrop, there are currently only 26,000 families receiving financial assistance from the Community Development Councils and only 3,000 receive help under the Public Assistance Scheme.
-
good read.
-
Its Sad