littlespeck said:

The proportion of Singaporeans earning less than S$1,000 a month rose to 18% last year, from 16% in 2002, according to central bank data.

The bad part is that life is often worse for the unemployed – compared to other countries - because Singapore has no safety net and no rural hinterland to cushion their suffering.

Unlike in Malaysia or Thailand, a jobless person who cannot cope with the global market has no countryside to retreat to so that he can live off the land.

The problem will get worse. In other words, the rich will get richer and the poor, poorer with the middle class remaining more or less stagnant.

The state’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has worsened from 42.5 in 1998 to 47.2 in 2006, which makes it in league with the Philippines (46.1) and Guatemala (48.3), and worse than China (44.7) according to the World Bank.

Recommended by at82: "It says alot about the state of Singapore's economy when there are more people earning less $1000 per month in 2007 compared to 2002..."

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Salary in Singapore said:

Even though the maximum individual tax rate is 20%, most of us will be charged at a (much) lower rate due to the progressive tax structure. For example, if your chargeable income is $100k, your tax rate is only 7.1%. The graph below shows effective tax rate against chargeable income...

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "IRAS website should have provided such a calculator. (Maybe I couldn't find it there.)"

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Dannyboy said:

Wouldn’t it be nice if you can “benchmark” your annual income against the general population in Singapore?

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Seems like benchmarking salaries is all the rage these days. Why not benchmark your own annual income against the rest?"

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KTM said:

The KTM just read this commentary on a subject he cares about, but he has no idea what Andy Ho is driving at. ...

First, why is the General Household Survey so lame that it doesn't tell us anything about what's going on? Or at least allow us to answer the simple question about whether things are getting better or worse? Can someone go and figure out who to do this right in future years so that we can have household surveys that actually allow us to make some sense of what's really going and answer some simple questions?

Second, the KTM cannot follow Andy's logic. He says that even though the poor are apparently getting poorer, it doesn't tell us anything 'cos the poor 5 years ago may not be the same as the poor 5 years later (i.e., today). It matters meh? Poor means poor loh.

Recommended by at82: "I also dun understand what social mobility got to do with the fact that the bottom 30% have negative income growth. Even if bottom 30% in 2000 is different from the those in 2005, it is still a fact that the bottom of the society is earning lesser than before, what..."

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The Asia Times said:

Singapore's social divide increased during the economic crisis that hit East Asia in 1997. While the average income of Singaporeans fell by 2.7% in that period, that of the poorest families fell by a staggering 49%, according to a paper by Professor Mukhopadhaya Pundarik of Singapore's National University. However, it seems the problem is inherent in the country's past and present political economy (the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services and their management).

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "A look at those disenfranchised by economic restructuring and the push for Singapore to be Asia's sweatshop."

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Rambling Librarian blogs about NTUC Income CEO Mr Tan Kin Lian's blog:

Mr. Tan's blog is the first Singapore business-related blog that I know of. Probably the first, and dare I say, the only one? I stand to be corrected.

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