PETALING JAYA: Tesla CEO, Elon Musk recently tweeted that Singapore along with many other countries are “going extinct”.
His tweet was in response to a post regarding Singapore’s declining birth rate.
The post stated that Singapore’s birth rate had “hit rock bottom”, which translates to “more seniors” and “fewer workers”, thus a “shrinking labour force”.
Citing Newsweek, the post shared that by 2030, “nearly 1 in 4 Singaporeans will be over 65, and the support ratio has plummeted to 4 working adults per senior. In 2014, it was 6.”
According to the post, the Singapore government is “urging more hiring of older workers and turning to robots – Singapore has the world’s second-highest robot density – to plug the gaps.”
Musk retweeted this post, adding that “Singapore (and many other countries) are going extinct”.
His retweet has been viewed 44 million times.
Meanwhile back in Aug 2024, the number of babies born in 2023 in Singapore fell to the lowest in at least the past 50 years, The Straits Times (ST) reported.
It said based on the “Report on Registration of Births and Deaths 2023” published on July 11, a total of 33,541 babies were born in 2023 – a 5.8 per cent fall from the 35,605 births recorded in 2022 and 13.3 percent lower than the 38,672 births in 2021.
