Fertility rates, pollution, income inequality: What could a ‘quality of life’ target mean for ministers’ bonuses?
The indicator could be included in National Bonus targets, but analysts are divided on what should be included
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[SINGAPORE] Fertility rates, pollution levels and income inequality could be some of the metrics which a “quality of life” target can measure when deciding ministerial bonuses, said analysts.
This follows the move to revise ministerial salaries, with the reference salary for a starting-grade minister going up from S$1.1 million to S$1.8 million under the existing benchmark formula, which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in Parliament on Tuesday (Sep 8).
The National Bonus indicators will also be tightened to keep the targets realistic against a maturing economy, said Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing in a separate speech.
The government is also exploring adding a “quality of life” measure to the framework, as recommended by an independent review committee. Chan, however, did not elaborate on what this could entail.
Parliament is set to debate both ministerial speeches on the review of political salaries on Sep 10.
Political analysts whom The Business Times spoke to said the move towards introducing a quality-of-life target is welcomed in principle, as it would shift the National Bonus framework beyond pure economic performance towards more people-centred outcomes.
But they noted that it would be difficult to settle on indicators that are both meaningful and measurable.
“It is the holy grail of social science to work out a definitive set of ‘quality of life’ measures,” said Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Gillian Koh.
“If there are just a few, that might be easier to tackle but everyone will have different views of what should go into it.”
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Measuring quality of life
There is a broad spectrum of indicators that could count towards a quality-of-life measure, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.
While more precise measures of ministerial performance are welcome, he questioned what such indicators might look like.
“Would they include such indicators as cost of living, pollution levels, heritage and environmental protection, poverty rates, overall crime rates, and TFR (total fertility rate) for instance?”
Prof Chong also suggested that, beyond national-level indicators, ministry-specific metrics could offer a closer measure of individual performance.
“Ministry KPIs are, after all, available in the budget revenue and expenditure documents released every year,” he added.
He proposed linking ministerial salaries to the national median income, with a premium calculated based on performance against the National Bonus indicators as well as key national priorities such as the TFR.
This, he said, could tie ministers’ incentives “more closely to the concerns of ordinary Singaporeans”, while offering a more precise reflection of individual performance – similar to what is observed in other sectors.
Eugene Tan, associate law professor at the Singapore Management University, cautioned that not all national priorities can be taken on board as National Bonus indicators. He pushed back against the idea of using TFR as a measure, given that the decision to have children is “a very personal decision”.
That said, he agreed that there was merit in the broader idea of tying national priorities to the National Bonus indicators, so long as such priorities are made known to the public.
He suggested that Singapore take reference from the United Nations Human Development Index – even though the city-state already scores highly on these measures.
As a starting point, he proposed indicators such as income inequality, ecological sustainability, and “various measures of well-being”.
Overall, Prof Tan said the difficulty in measurement should not be a reason to avoid using such indicators, so long as they are “sufficiently robust and objective, and can be adequately measured across time”.
Aslam Sardar, chief executive of the Institute for Human Resource Professionals, similarly said that incorporating quality of life into national performance measures was “directionally right”, but cautioned against treating it as a standalone KPI.
Quality of life is “inherently multi-dimensional and difficult to capture in a single metric”, he said, adding that it may be more appropriate to consider it as part of a broader assessment of national progress.
“What gets measured should reflect what matters to citizens, and increasingly, quality of life is one of those outcomes,” he added.
Measuring the benchmark
Analysts were split on whether the formula to use the top 1,000 Singaporean earners to determine the benchmark remains a fair measure of Singapore’s talent pool.
The benchmark pegs a starting-grade minister’s reference salary to the median income of the top 1,000 Singaporean earners, which includes chief executives and managers in fields including manufacturing, healthcare and financial services.
Prof Tan from SMU argued that the pool should be widened, to perhaps 10,000 of the top earners, noting that a narrower base risks looking elitist and skewed towards higher salaries.
IPS’ Koh disagreed as she made the point that the system is deliberately agnostic about which professions fall within the top 1,000 earners.
“What the committee did was to get the benchmark and then look at what professions these top 1,000 earners are in,” she said.
Sardar said the top 1,000 earners remained a “reasonable and defensible” benchmark, but argued that its robustness depended on whether the group was sufficiently representative of Singapore’s wider leader talent market.
The composition should reflect an appropriate balance across sectors, industries, organisation sizes, ownership structures, and leadership roles, he said.
If certain sectors or organisation types are disproportionately represented, he said the benchmark could distort remuneration outcomes.
More broadly, Sardar said the question was less about including or excluding particular professions than whether the benchmark continued to reflect the changing pool from which Singapore’s leaders could emerge.
Leadership talent today spans areas including business, technology, healthcare, academia, professional services, and the public and social sectors, he noted.
Still, he cautioned that no benchmark could fully capture the unique nature of political leadership, which differs from commercial leadership in its responsibilities, accountabilities, motivations and public-service ethos.
“The benchmark is therefore most valuable as a guide rather than a market rate to be mechanically matched,” he said.
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