Income security of older women in Singapore
......a cause for concern
A MAJOR concern for aged care organisations and women’s groups such as AWARE and TSAO Foundation is that older women in Singapore are not adequately prepared for old age. They tend to take old age income security for granted, and assume that they can rely on traditional family support systems throughout their lives.
An older woman’s lifetime of fulfilling gender-based roles such as family and elderly caregiving (which do not earn income), unequal income earning capacity (as compared to men), and lowly-paid employment in the informal sector (which does not contribute to CPF) has led to the ‘inevitable’ – accumulation of insufficient savings for old age. This problem is particularly acute among the ‘oldest old’ (defined as aged 80 years or over).
An AWARE-TSAO Foundation report on Women and Income Security in an ageing Singapore population confirms this stark picture of ageing among older women. The study was an analysis of 20 years of published data on women in Singapore from 1980 to 2000.
The face of the ‘oldest old’ in Singapore, is likely to be a woman who has outlived her spouse by many years and become widowed. After a lifetime of low-paying jobs in the informal sector, caregiving and homemaking, she is left with negligible CPF savings or personal savings.
Previously dependent on her spouse whom she has outlived, she is now dependent on her children for survival. Her security is assured as long as her children continue to support her. However, her children may not have sufficient resources to provide her with lifelong sufficient care as they too, are sandwiched between caring for their own families and aged parents.
The older Singapore woman’s situation is worse off if she suffers from a disability or serious illness. Age-related disabilities affect women more because physical frailty comes naturally with longevity.
This total reliance on family for financial support – especially for widows - has come about because of the woman’s shorter working history, lower level of education and lowly-paid jobs in the past – all of which contributed to lesser CPF and personal savings. Besides traditional family support, these older women have no other safety net. Only those in extreme poverty qualify for Public Assistance.
Feminization of ageing in Singapore
The report shows that the global trend of feminization of ageing among the ‘oldest old’ has already taken root in Singapore.
More older women than men at age 80+
Feminization of ageing is evident from the significantly higher number of older women aged 80+ than men. In 2000, the ratio was 1,720 females to just 1,000 males, and eight out of ten of these old-old women were widowed. The women’s longer life expectancy is a contributing factor to the sex ratio in their favour.
Life expectancy at birth is 80.4 years for women and 76.4 for men in 2001. If they lived to 60, their life expectancy could potentially be increased to 84 for women and 81 for men (based on 1999 statistics). Longer life spans increase the demand for better old age income security, health and social support.
More older women with disabilities than men
Physical frailty and disability occur naturally with older ages, and the report shows that women with disabilities outnumber men significantly. Statistically, women among the semi-ambulant and non-ambulant elderly aged 65 and above outnumbered men by almost twice in 2000. In absolute numbers, there were a total of 17,270 older women in both categories compared to only 8,580 men in 2000.
More older women heading 1-2 room public housing flats
An outcome of feminization of ageing is the large number of female-dominated households among the smaller public housing units (1 to 2 room flats), headed by older women who are likely to be single, widowed, divorced or separated.
This trend of older Singapore women staying in smaller housing units has been increasing, from 11.8% for ages 40-59 to 22.8% for age 60+, who may be predominantly living alone.
The feminization of ageing among the old-old in Singapore poses serious questions to current public policies on ageing and eldercare:
- What can be done to address the income security needs of older women who are poor, isolated, widowed and bed bound or homebound because of disabilities?
- What about the income security needs of women who have been homemakers and family caregivers all their lives? What formal mechanism (s) should be in place to ensure that these women would have a modicum of security for their old age?
Income security of future cohorts of older women
The problem of income security which now affects older women in their 60s and older may also affect the next generation of older women - women in their 40s who will mature into old age in another 20 or 30 years. Although the study shows that women in their 40s have better education compared to 10 years ago, their employability in the next 10, 20 years is uncertain as the Singapore economy restructures and became more globalised.
For women below 40 and who have higher education, their future in mature years appears to be more assured, particularly for those employed in the higher-paying administrative, managerial and professional jobs. They will have accumulated more CPF savings and owned assets like a home.
However, the persistent trend of married women withdrawing early from formal employment to raise families means disruption to promising careers, loss of income, and loss of employment-based CPF savings. The study shows that females peak at ages 30-44 in labour participation and then declines steadily. Overall, only 55% of women are economically active compared to 80% of men.
Compounding the unique situation of women is gender income disparities. Despite similar qualifications, men earn generally higher incomes than women. Hence, women will still tend to accumulate less average CPF savings than men in their lifetime which means they will have less money for their old age.
Old-age dependency on family and support groups
The current system of old age dependency on family and informal support mechanisms like charitable groups in Singapore may have worked in the past but as families become smaller and women live much longer than men, the support base for older women aged 60+ has also fallen; from 8.7 to only 6.3 persons per aged woman, and this is expected to decrease further as age increases.
The situation of older women in the future looks grim as there are fewer siblings to share the financial cost of care giving. Moreover, the older woman is likely to be widowed and frailer due to longer life span and old age disabilities.
Gender dimension in eldercare policies
The AWARE and TSAO Foundation study on women and ageing raises many questions about the adequacy of current “one size fits all” eldercare policies:
- What is the income security for older women who have negligible CPF savings and personal savings, and declining support from family and children?
- Can the family be dependent upon to provide adequate lifelong support for the growing number of older women who not only continue to outlive men but also live to very frail age?
- What about the future of younger cohorts of women who have stopped working in their prime to fulfill their gender-based roles of raising families or become caregivers for their elderly parents? (These women will become the future old)
- How can public policies on ageing and eldercare address the gender dimensions of ageing?
Much still needs to be done to create greater awareness in Singapore on the gender dimensions of ageing. Public policies on ageing and eldercare should consider the gender differences in ageing, and the plight of different subgroups of older women who need special attention.
They include:
- Widowed older women (aged 60+)
- Poorly-educated and lowly-skilled women in their 40s and 50s (who will become Singapore’s future old in 20 to 30 years)
- Older women who are either semi-ambulatory or non-ambulatory and not living with their spouses or children
- Single and divorced older women
- Women who have been homemakers all their lives
- Women in the informal sector (they will have no CPF savings for old age)
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