Singapore, explained.
This is not the first time Singapore’s government has sought to play matchmaker for its young (Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images)
The government is playing cupid with a Nobel Prize-winning algorithm, but there’s more to the picture of the declining birth rate.
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Can Singapore matchmake its way to population growth?Can Singapore matchmake its way to population growth?
Singapore has set upon a novel approach to population challenges. “Swipe fatigue ends here,” declares FirstDate, a new government-run website. Part of the government’s GovTech technology development initiative, FirstDate promises to match up single Singaporeans aged between 18 and 35 with the help of the Nobel Prize winning Gale-Shapley algorithm.
The motivations underpinning the website launch are serious. Like many countries in the region, Singapore is grappling with an aging population. Singapore has a larger annual population growth than neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia – up 1.6% in June 2026 compared to June 2025. But the raw percentage does not reflect the whole story.
The National Population and Talent Division (Opens in new window) of the Prime Minister’s Office noted that this growth is largely due to an increase in migrant workers for large government infrastructure projects. The citizen population only increased by 0.7%. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said in June (Opens in new window), “given that, our own fertility rates are not likely to go up sharply.”
To begin, FirstDate is targeting civil servants, and could expand if successful. This is not the first time Singapore’s government has sought to play matchmaker for its young. In the 1980s, a government-backed initiative paired the city’s university-educated women with men of a similar education background. That program, which expanded to those with a high school diploma, was accused of being an elitist project, though officials noted non-university educated Singaporeans had no issue finding dates.
“You need a very small space to have sex,” said (Opens in new window) then Senior Minister for State Josephine Teo to young Singaporeans in 2016, lamenting the declining growth rate. Teo’s comment was seen by many as evidence that the governing People’s Action Party had not grasped the impact housing insecurity and the cost of living were having on the choice by Millennial – and now, Gen Z – Singaporeans, to hold off having children. In a Facebook post shortly afterwards Teo confessed (Opens in new window) that her words “might not have captured everything in the way I intended,” and conceded the financial concerns of would-be parents.
A review is underway into a range of factors that could encourage population growth, including reforms to childcare (Huantao Liu/Unsplash)
The year Teo blundered into the conversation, Singaporeans aged over 65 made up 13.7% of the population. This year, the country officially (Opens in new window) became a “super-aged” society with 21.4% of the population 65 and above. Within the next decade, that portion is expected to hit 25%. With an ageing population comes pressure on public health and welfare systems, as well as a need for aged care workers.
A review is underway into a range of factors that could encourage population growth, including reforms to childcare. Looking elsewhere in Asia for solutions, population planners may find only a few policy ideas. Japan is the world’s leading super-aged society, surpassing the 20% threshold a generation ago. Still, Japan struggles to plug labour gaps and recently expanded its infamously tight immigration policy to attract aged care and healthcare workers, many from Southeast Asia. This is an option Singapore is already familiar with. Migrant domestic workers, many engaged in care work, already represent 16% of the country’s overall population.
Others have noted that finding a date is not the issue – securing somewhere to live, childcare support and financial assistance for dependents is.
South Korea’s experience may be more illustrative of the social tensions in Singapore. South Korea passed the one-in-five threshold in 2024, meaning one in every five citizens is aged 65 or older. This milestone was declared a “national emergency (Opens in new window)” by then President Yoon Suk-yeol. Policy to address ageing came alongside social and cultural shifts, with women demanding better access to childcare, workplace participation and gender equality. Other women in South Korea are adherents of the 4B movement (Opens in new window), which means they have refused to engage in marriage, childbirth, sex and dating, declining traditional gender roles.
Young women of Singapore vox popped in the days following the FirstDate launch were measured in their views of it. Some said they would give the website a go; one 30-year-old civil servant told Al Jazeera (Opens in new window) that she had had enough with the major dating apps and hoped FirstDate could provide an alternative. Others noted that finding a date is not the issue – securing somewhere to live, childcare support and financial assistance for dependents is.
About the author
Erin Cook
Erin Cook is a journalist covering Southeast Asia politics.
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