Less than 30,000 babies were born in 2025 – the first time since Singapore’s independence in 1965 – even as the number of deaths rose. The twin demographic challenges of falling births and rising deaths posed what the Government has described as an existential challenge.
A total of 29,864 babies were born in 2025, 11.4 per cent fewer than the 33,703 births in 2024, according to the Report on Registration of Births and Deaths 2025. The report was released by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) on July 27.
Checks by The Straits Times found that 2025 is the first year in which the annual number of births fell below 30,000 in post-independence Singapore. In 1965, the year Singapore became independent, 55,725 babies were born.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the annual number of births ranged from more than 40,000 to over 50,000 in most years. In the past two decades, annual births have fallen below 40,000 in most years.
In 2025, 87 per cent, or 26,071, of all babies born had at least one parent who is a Singaporean.
With people marrying at a later age, the median age of first-time mothers has continued to rise, which adds to Singapore’s fertility challenge as a woman’s fertility declines with age.
The median age of first-time mothers rose from 31.3 years in 2021 to 32.1 years in 2025.
In terms of educational attainment, about two in three first-time mothers in 2025 had a university degree, while about one in five had an A-level certificate, a diploma, an Institute of Technical Education qualification or the equivalent.
Only about one in 10 first-time mothers had O-level or lower educational qualifications.
The ICA report comes about five months after Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said in February that the resident total fertility rate (TFR) fell to a new low of 0.87 in 2025. The TFR refers to the average number of babies each woman would have during her reproductive years.
With birth rates falling at an unprecedented pace, Singapore’s citizen population may start to shrink by the early 2040s without new interventions, Gan had said.
While the Government’s top priority is to continue supporting Singaporeans in forming families, he had also stressed the need to have a “carefully managed immigration flow to augment our low birth rate”.
Experts have attributed Singapore’s persistent baby woes to more Singaporeans remaining single and married couples having fewer or no children.
To tackle these issues, an inter-agency workgroup called the Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup was formed earlier in 2026 to find ways to better support Singaporeans in marrying and having children.
However, the latest demographic data is not all bleak as the number of teenage mothers and single-parent birth registrations fell significantly. Single-parent birth registrations refer to babies whose births were registered without the father’s name.
Only 140 babies were born to teenagers aged 19 and younger in 2025, a 43 per cent fall from the 244 births recorded in 2024.
Some 258 babies were registered without the father’s name in 2025, 22 per cent fewer than the 330 babies in 2024. Only 17 per cent of these babies in 2025 were born to teens aged 19 and under.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths rose by 0.2 per cent from 26,442 in 2024 to 26,499 in 2025.
In 2025, the two major causes of deaths were cancer, and heart and hypertensive diseases, which accounted for slightly over half of all deaths here.
The report said that “unnatural deaths”, such as accidents, suicides and other “external causes”, made up only 2 per cent of all deaths.
Most of those who died were elderly, with 87 per cent of them aged 60 and older.
The median age of those who died was 78.2 years old in 2025, up from 76.1 years in 2016.
Mr Mathew Mathews, head of the Institute of Policy Studies Social Lab, pointed out that the gap between the numbers of births and deaths has narrowed over the years, and Singapore is approaching a point where deaths may outnumber births.
In 2025, there were just 3,365 more babies born than the number of people who died, down from 7,261 in 2024 and 14,380 in 2021.
Over the longer term, the narrowing gap means fewer young people joining the workforce, while the number of seniors continues to grow.
This will place greater pressure on a smaller number of people of working age to support healthcare, elder care and social spending, while families have heavier caregiving responsibilities, Mr Mathews said.
“It could also mean that Singapore becomes more reliant on immigration, higher productivity, automation and longer working lives to sustain economic growth,” he added.
Mr Shannon Ang, an assistant professor of sociology at the Nanyang Technological University, said that Singapore has to depend on immigrants to maintain the population size, given the demographic trends.
However, too much immigration too quickly has implications for social cohesion and the Government has to tackle the issue carefully, he said. The Straits Times
