Our long-term demographic goal is to stabilize the population at a certain number sometime in the first half of the 21st century. To attain this goal, two conditions must be fulfilled.

The first is that we must reduce our fertility to the replacement level, or the two-child family level; the other is to maintain it at this level indefinitely.

The first condition was accomplished in 1975 when our fertility was reduced to the two-child family level. But we were not able to realise the second condition in that fertility continued to fall below this level to reach the low point of 1.5-child family level in 1985.

The continuous decline of our fertility below that two-child family level can be attributed to our comprehensive population control programme as well as to many economic, social and cultural factors favouring a small family size among our general population.

To elaborate on the above points, I have prepared three alternative population projections based on three different fertility assumptions.

In the first projection, it is assumed that our fertility will move back from the 1.5-child family level in 1985 to the replacement level of the two-child family in the year 2000, and will continue to be at this level indefinitely.

In the second projection, fertility is assumed to remain constant indefinitely at the 1.5-child family level.

In the third, it is assumed that fertility will continue to decline slightly from the 1.5-child family level in 1985 to the 1.3-child level in the year 2000.

If we succeed in moving fertility back to the two-child family level in the year 2000, the total population of Singapore will reach the peak of about 3.39 million in the year 2030 and will remain just slightly below this figure indefinitely. This means that zero population growth will be experienced from the year 2030 onwards, with births equalling deaths each year.

If our fertility is not pushed back to the two-child family level and is allowed to continue indefinitely at the 1.5-child level, our population will peak at about 3.02 million in the year 2015. After that, it will decline continuously until it reaches 2.46 million in the year 2050. During this period, deaths will progressively exceed births each year.