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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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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