Review and adapt policies as needed to tackle inequality, sustain mobility: Maliki

AS reducing inequality and sustaining social mobility becomes harder over time, Singapore must monitor, review and adapt its policies as needed, said Second Minister for Education and for Foreign Affairs Maliki Osman on Thursday, the fourth day of debate on the President's address.

This includes coming to a societal consensus on a basic standard of living, ensuring absolute and not just relative mobility, and providing equal opportunities.

Over the past few decades, Singapore has done fairly well to ensure broad-based opportunities, he said, citing improvements in median income and education. While Singapore's inequality has been relatively high, like many cities, it is moderated by taxes and transfers.

"But reducing inequality and sustaining social mobility will get more difficult with time," he said. "So we need to monitor, review and adapt our policies, whenever needed, to ensure that they continue to serve our needs well, and that we can continue to provide the right environment for families to seize opportunities and move up in life."

First, while the government continues to invest in fundamentals such as education, jobs, housing and retirement adequacy, "our conversations on the kind of social compact we want must continue", he said.

"There needs to be societal consensus on what is a basic and reasonable standard of living that we commit to provide to all Singaporeans, bearing in mind that increases in support and benefits provided are not free, but ultimately paid for by everyone through taxes."

Second, what must be ensured is not just relative mobility - which is a zero-sum game - but absolute mobility, such that everyone makes progress. Key to this is having a strong and dynamic economy that can provide good jobs with reasonable wages and sustained wage increases, said Dr Maliki - and this is even as rapid economic growth becomes more difficult.

Third, Singapore must strive for greater equality of opportunity, not merely in providing access to public goods such as education, but in levelling uneven "starting blocks" in life.

Education is a major channel for this, with moves such as broadening the definition of merit and creating more pathways to higher education. It also includes the SkillsFuture movement, "which represents a continuous and broad meritocracy in which people can continue to learn and access new opportunities throughout life", he said.

To address inequalities from the start, more is being invested in enhancing access to quality and affordable pre-school education.

But he added: "Ensuring opportunities in society cannot just be about systems and structures. It is also about the values that shape our actions and that define us." Education also has a role in encouraging values such as egalitarianism, humility, and responsibility, he said.