SG Birth Data
Anthea Tay
2024-09-07
Introduction
Singapore has been experiencing declining birth rates for a long period of time and it has been one of the top concerns for our nation’s long-term stability. To combat this issue, our local Government has introduced a number of measures to incentivise families to have more children. In this report, I will be observing the trends of the number of births since 1967.
The data used in this report can be downloaded here: https://tablebuilder.singstat.gov.sg/table/TS/M810081
library(readr)
library(ggplot2)
library(psych)##
## Attaching package: 'psych'## The following objects are masked from 'package:ggplot2':
##
## %+%, alphabirths<-read_csv("SG Birth Data.csv")## Rows: 57 Columns: 8## ── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
## Delimiter: ","
## dbl (8): Data Series, Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number), Total Live-...
##
## ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
## ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.births## # A tibble: 57 × 8
## `Data Series` Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Numb…¹ Total Live-Births By…²
## <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 2023 33541 15552
## 2 2022 35605 16739
## 3 2021 38672 17895
## 4 2020 38590 18414
## 5 2019 39279 18553
## 6 2018 39039 18211
## 7 2017 39615 18570
## 8 2016 41251 19392
## 9 2015 42185 20248
## 10 2014 42232 20327
## # ℹ 47 more rows
## # ℹ abbreviated names: ¹`Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number)`,
## # ²`Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number)`
## # ℹ 5 more variables:
## # `Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number)` <dbl>,
## # `Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number)` <dbl>,
## # `Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number)` <dbl>, …Analysis of Birth Rates by birth order
describe(births)## vars n
## Data Series 1 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 2 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 3 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 4 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 5 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 6 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 7 57
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 8 57
## mean
## Data Series 1995.00
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 42821.74
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 17826.96
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 14285.60
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 6376.74
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 2152.07
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 835.42
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 1275.74
## sd
## Data Series 16.60
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 4527.52
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 2205.92
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 2163.98
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 1495.94
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 1075.39
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 931.38
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 2654.50
## median
## Data Series 1995
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 42185
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 18214
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 13999
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 6236
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 1876
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 470
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 236
## trimmed
## Data Series 1995.00
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 42659.15
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 18102.66
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 14307.83
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 6279.98
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 1961.47
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 613.89
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 581.77
## mad
## Data Series 20.76
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 4664.26
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 1854.73
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 1605.66
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 1685.72
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 597.49
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 96.37
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 62.27
## min max
## Data Series 1967 2023
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 33541 52957
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 11692 20755
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 9620 19495
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 3982 9806
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 1180 5394
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 323 4287
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 155 12344
## range skew
## Data Series 56 0.00
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 19416 0.40
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 9063 -1.10
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 9875 0.07
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 5824 0.49
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 4214 1.64
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 3964 2.27
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 12189 2.67
## kurtosis
## Data Series -1.26
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) -0.86
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 0.89
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) -0.14
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) -0.81
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 1.56
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 3.95
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 6.39
## se
## Data Series 2.20
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number) 599.68
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 1st Live-Birth (Number) 292.18
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 2nd Live-Birth (Number) 286.63
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 3rd Live-Birth (Number) 198.14
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 4th Live-Birth (Number) 142.44
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 5th Live-Birth (Number) 123.36
## Total Live-Births By Birth Order -> 6th Live-Birth & Over (Number) 351.60The summary statistics above a summary of the total births and the births by birth order for the past 57 years.
Observing the mean and median of the total birth by order, the number of births by birth order dip significantly at 2 and continue to drop as the birth order rises. This is showcases Singaporean families preference for small families.
Time-wise analysis of total births
cor(births$`Data Series`,births$`Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number)`)## [1] -0.5153985The correlation between births and year is negative. While this is expected, the strength of the correlation does not seem that high. This can be better analysed through a scatter plot.
plot(x=births$`Data Series`, y=births$`Total Live-Births By Birth Order (Number)`, type="p", xlab="Year", ylab="Total Live Births", main="Total Live Births per Year in Singapore", frame.plot=FALSE)
Observing the scatter plot, it can be noted that the low correlation factor can be attributed to a spike in the 1990s. This can be attributed to the Government realising that Singapore had falling birth rates in the 1980s and reversed a “stop at 2” policy in 1986. This resulted in a rise in birth rates for a period before the subsequent dip in the 2000s. The birth rate had a brief increase in the 2010s due to additional subsidies and pro-family policies. However, the birth rate has continued to dip in recent years with rising cost of living and stress quoted as the top reasons.