by Lily Jin
Last summer, I found myself riding in a taxi through the city of my dreams. Through the car window, I caught glimpses of high-rise skyscrapers blinking over a glittering Marina Bay, and rainbow-silled British colonial buildings peeking over palm tree fronds. Cruising along Clarke Quay, exploring Chinatown, walking in Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay, any tourist would see and admire this city-country’s contrasting urban glamor and historical charm.
Sitting starry-eyed in the backseat and thinking of Crazy Rich Asians, I expressed my admiration out loud. “It would be so cool to live here.”
“No.” The taxi driver shook his head as he veered around a motorcyclist carrying a crate of bananas. “Property price too expensive. Tourists don’t see that.”
Glitzy gardens, museums, skyscrapers, shopping districts — they are all indicators of Singapore’s near-unfettered growth over the past few decades. Deemed a free-market success, Singapore’s economy built itself up remarkably rapidly through trade, industrial manufacturing, and foreign investment. Today, Singapore’s low taxes, free-capital, and liberal immigration policies make it quite the financial powerhouse.
It turns out that in some aspects, unmentioned in Crazy Rich Asians, Singapore is not as glamorous as it seems. The media portrays the city-state as a glittering hub of international wealth, but the subtle truth is that skyrocketing GDP can leave a gap in its wake. If we talk numbers, Singapore’s Gini index (a measure of wealth inequality from 0 to 1 where higher values indicate higher inequality) in 2024 is 0.38. In the US, it is 0.41. According to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, the inequality as measured by the Gini index has increased in Singapore by nearly 23% since 2008. Moreover, Singapore’s average wealth growth strongly exceeds its median growth, indicating most of its rise in wealth has benefited the upper income brackets. The jarring contrasts in Singapore’s scenery that I noted as a tourist are part of a deeper national issue — one that is more visible to locals.
I talked to Ryan Tan ‘25, a Yale-NUS college student who lives in Singapore’s Red Light district.
“In my own neighborhood, there’s a high constitution of sex workers, gambling, and drugs. Most people have this image of Singapore as this very clean society, but this one neighborhood is where I guess most of the vice can be found. So it’s an interesting contrast,” Tan said.
According to Tan, Singapore’s housing is another means through which we can glean social inequality and class divide. Majority of the population lives in relatively affordable public housing subsidized by the government. The remaining 9% of the population live in private apartments, like condominiums, and the upper 1% stay in actual houses — the property equivalent of gold. In the past, public housing was incredibly accessible – anyone who wanted a public housing unit could obtain one. But around 1997, after the Asian financial crisis, Singapore changed the model. Now, if you want to get a public housing unit, there are multiple requirements to meet, such as being married.
“If foreigners wanted to live in Singapore permanently, you would probably have to buy a private house, which would be especially more expensive,” Tan said.
Another fascinating aspect of Singapore’s housing model is its intention to maintain social harmony—a historical priority for a country as multiracial and multicultural as Singapore.
Starting in 1989, the government required minimum levels of occupancy of each of the city’s main ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, and Indian) in housing blocks to prevent the formation of “racial enclaves.”
From what I saw during my four-day stay, ethnic enclaves still very much exist, but not at the cost of harmony. There are streets that feature exclusively Malaysian grocery stores and hawker food stalls, neighborhoods where Hindi is the loudest language, and a vibrantly Muslim district (Kampong Glam) complete with a golden-domed mosque and Arab textile shops.
Singapore’s greatest divide may remain between social classes. Last year, when a Singaporean teen made a TikTok video showcasing her “first luxury bag” (purchased for S$80), the status-conscious public was quick to belittle the bag brand. In wealthy countries like Singapore, social class stratifications are pervasive.
In a sense, the desire for higher international status dominated much of Singapore’s own history.
Stagnation may be Singaporeans’ greatest fear. In Teo You Yenn’s This Is What Inequality Looks Like, Yenn highlights Singapore’s rags-to-riches story and its lasting effect on the country’s present priority. He writes, “…To remain amazing, we must keep moving. Movement, motion, mobility—these are not cosmetic; they are about survival. If we stand still, we are doomed.”
“Most of Singapore’s economic model was based on moving up,” Tan said. “Something that was really drilled into us at school in Singapore is that Singapore is nothing. We have no natural resources. Singapore’s greatest asset is its people, and that’s why education and migration is such a huge emphasis. There are a lot of Singaporeans in New York, the US, working in Silicon Valley. The hope is that one day they’ll go back to the country.”
Ironically, all this motion forwards and upwards has left many people behind. Those who are able to come to the US, and make it to selective American universities, usually come from international schools, which only rich families can afford to send their children to. Students who struggle in Singapore’s public school system turn to vocational work. They are the ones feeling the pinch of the rising cost of living.
Like other capitalist societies, Singapore prides itself on its meritocratic idea that anyone can succeed in Singapore if they are talented and hard-working. Social mobility should be possible, and encouraged. Yet those who excel in the education system are those whose parents can afford to provide them with extra resources. And unfortunately, the idea of meritocracy is also double-edged: those at the bottom are left believing that they deserve to be there.
“While meritocracy has long been the ‘organizing principle; of Singaporean society, the Government needs to rethink its approach to education and work so that advantages and privileges do not become entrenched and persist over generations,” said former Singaporean president Halimah Yacob in her address to Parliament last year.
With the general election in a few months, Singapore’s future of motion seems less certain.
“Right now, the country is at an inflection point. People don’t know if it’s going to be a plateau, if we’re going to be progressive. there’s a general election coming up, probably in the next few months. and the general sentiment is people aren’t sure if the country will continue to be as prosperous. The country is facing the few issues that a lot of countries face now: housing is getting expensive, almost inaccessible, and jobs don’t come easily,” Tan said.
After all, Singapore is half the size of Rhode Island, and though currently it seems as if every square inch is used to generate revenue, one never knows what change lies in the future.
Still, uncertainty doesn’t deter Singapore from making a conscious effort to stay relevant. With their land recognition, having recently announced new plans to build artificial islands for more housing, Singapore is still in pursuit of bigger, newer, better. Singapore seeks perpetual motion in terms of national wealth and global standing, as if chaos would descend if it ever becomes still.
On my last day, I took a jetty to an island just off the mainland called Pulau Ubin. One of the two last remaining traditional fishing villages of Singapore, Pulau Ubin is Singapore’s most memorable contrast. Untouched by the rest of Singapore’s urbanization, Pulau Ubin’s wooden house villages and swampy boardwalks are a complete divergence from the hustle and bustle of the mainland. I was in a piece of Singapore’s past, an outskirt that had stood still in time.
As we move from past to future, we imagine an upward trajectory, as if that’s what motion means. Who knows how Singapore will transform in fifty years. But it’s come far, and like time, forward it must go.
Lily is a first-year in Timothy Dwight College. She can be reached at lily.jin@yale.edu.