Speech by Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for Health, at the Inaugural Conference of the Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing (CREA), 11 November 2016

Professor Arnoud De Meyer, President, SMU

Professor Bryce Hool, Dean of the School of Economics, Director CREA, SMU

Distinguished Speakers

Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

AN AGEING SINGAPORE

1.      Good morning .It gives me great pleasure to join you this morning for the Singapore Management University’s (SMU) Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing, or CREA’s conference. I am delighted to see a diverse audience here today - researchers, policymakers and analysts from our government agencies, representatives from non-governmental organisations from Singapore and abroad. To all our overseas speakers, a warm welcome to Singapore.

2.     Many worry about population ageing and refer to it as a ‘Silver Tsunami’.  With population ageing, there will be rising demand for care services, and a greater burden may be placed on a smaller group of younger citizens to shoulder the increasing social and healthcare spending for a growing group of economically inactive older citizens.  Indeed, this challenge is real – some societies that have aged before us are grappling with the challenges of having to contain aged care and healthcare costs and to provide enough capacity to care and support the senior population.

3.     But population ageing need not be a disaster – it will only seem so, if we all decline after a magical retirement age, and spend longer years in inactivity and ill health. This outcome is not inevitable. For Singapore, the good news is that we are not only living longer but also healthier. Singapore’s healthy life expectancy (HALE) which provides an estimate of the average number of years lived in good health has increased from 65.8 years in 1990 to 72.3 years in 2015 for males based on findings from a 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study^[1]. For females, it has improved from 69.0 years to 75.0 years over the same period. Instead of only worrying about ageing, if we can individually achieve longer healthy and productive life years in tandem with the expansion in our total life years, we can collectively turn a silver tsunami into productive longevity.

4.     In fact, earlier when I engaged the elderly population about ageing while we were developing the Action Plan for Successful Ageing, many seniors stood up when we mentioned ‘Silver Tsunami’ and asked why do we call Ageing a ‘Silver Tsunami’? It need not and should not be a disaster. Ageing is actually part of our lives.

ENSURING RETIREMENT ADEQUACY

5.     It is with this in mind that the Ministerial Committee on Ageing launched the Action Plan for Successful Ageing report in February this year. This Action Plan includes more than 70 initiatives covering over 12 areas, and is a blueprint for a whole of nation effort to help Singaporeans age gracefully and confidently. This Action Plan is work in progress and need not be limited to 70 initiatives.

6.     At the individual level, we want to help older Singaporeans have the means to live and age well over a longer life span. Whether we have adequate means to age well is a function of a few key aspects: health, work, savings and assets. The Action Plan outlines plans in each of these four areas.

Adequate Retirement Savings and Assets

7.     First, savings. The Central Provident Fund (CPF) is a key pillar to help everyone save for their old age, finance and own their own homes, save for medical expenses, provide basic health insurance for all, for life, and to supplement the income for those with lesser means.

8.     To help Singaporeans save for old age, the Government recently increased the CPF contribution rates for older workers and raised the monthly salary ceiling for CPF contributions. The Government has also accepted the CPF Advisory Panel’s recommendations to introduce more flexibility into our CPF system while ensuring that the retirement adequacy for each Singaporean is not compromised. These recommendations include allowing Singaporeans to top-up the CPF savings in their Retirement Account up to the Enhanced Retirement Sum to receive a higher CPF LIFE payout, the option to defer the commencement of CPF LIFE payouts until age 70 and allowing spouses to transfer their CPF savings above the Basic Retirement Sum to each other.

9.     We also recognise that there are some elderly Singaporeans who need more financial support. This is why we have implemented the Silver Support Scheme, which provides a quarterly cash supplement for the bottom 20% of Singaporeans aged 65 and above who have low incomes through life and who currently have little or no family support. For low-wage workers, the Workfare Income Supplement provides cash and CPF top-ups to help them continue working and saving for retirement.

10.     Second, assets. In addition to cash savings, we have also enhanced the range of options for seniors to unlock the equity of their assets. Today, 9 in 10 households headed by seniors are homeowners^[2] and 80% of households headed by seniors are in public housing. Households who prefer to move to another flat can right-size to a smaller flat with the Silver Housing Bonus, or if they prefer to stay in the same flat, sell back the tail-end lease of the flat to the Housing & Development Board (HDB) under the Lease Buyback Scheme.

Affordable Healthcare

11.     Third, health. Healthcare affordability is another issue close to the heart of seniors. We introduced MediShield Life in November last year, which means that all Singaporeans now have protection against large hospitalisation expenses, for life. In the first eleven months of MediShield Life, more than $600 million has been paid to nearly 400,000 claims. Together with the government subsidies provided in our public healthcare institutions, our individual savings in our Medisave accounts, as well as Medifund, a safety net for financially needy Singaporeans, all Singaporeans now enjoy better peace of mind about healthcare affordability. We also launched the Pioneer Generation package in 2014 for our special generation of citizens who helped build Singapore, to better take care of their healthcare expenses for life. About 300,000 Pioneers have benefitted from the Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) subsidies and about 250,000 to 300,000 Pioneers have enjoyed PG subsidies at polyclinics and subsidised Specialist Outpatient Clinics (SOCs). Last month, the Ministry also appointed an ElderShield Review Committee to study ways to enhance ElderShield, so as to provide better support for Singaporeans who become severely disabled during their old age. The Committee is expected to complete the review and submit its recommendations to the Ministry by the end of next year.

ENABLING WORKPLACE LONGEVITY

12.     Fourth, work. Our larger effort will have to be placed on enabling workplace longevity, so that seniors who want to engage in meaningful employment can continue to do so for as long as they are able to.

13.     The government will be raising the re-employment age from 65 to 67 next year to enable older workers to continue working if they wish to do so. We also recently extended and enhanced the WorkPro scheme in July this year to support employers’ efforts to re-design jobs for seniors and create age-friendly workplaces.

14.     In addition, we are providing more opportunities for Singaporeans, including seniors, to learn for life through SkillsFuture initiatives. Under the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Enhanced Subsidy, Singaporeans aged 40 and above can enjoy subsidies of at least 90% for selected courses at institutions of higher learning. Mid-career workers can deepen their skills, knowledge and experience by leveraging on resources such as place-and-train programmes, modular courses etc via the SkillsFuture Credit.

15.     To complement these measures, we are bringing health education and preventative health services to seniors at both communities and workplaces. The Health Promotion Board has rolled out the National Seniors’ Health Programme to empower seniors to take charge on key aspects of their own health such as nutrition, exercise, falls prevention and chronic disease management. We are also bringing workplace health programmes to mature workers in sectors such as transport and logistics, healthcare, education and retail. Thus far, our workplace health programmes have touched over 15,000 mature workers and effectively helped our older workers improve their health outcomes.

SMU’S CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON THE ECONOMICS OF AGEING (CREA)

16.     Even as we empower seniors of today to age successfully and gracefully, we want to plan forward to meet the needs of seniors of tomorrow. Research is therefore key to helping us transform the experience of ageing in Singapore. This should be firmly anchored in a multi-disciplinary approach, to allow us to bring new knowledge across disciplines.

17.     CREA, a research centre established by SMU with the support of the Ministry of Education, is an example of the research capability being built in Singapore. CREA was established in 2014 looking at the impact of ageing and retirement on the financial aspects of living, particularly in healthcare, housing and pension. CREA has been spearheading long-term multi-disciplinary research, based on the data collected through the Singapore Life Panel (SLP). As Professor Meyer said earlier, I am excited about the Singapore Life Panel, in terms of its scale, intensity and frequency of data collection, which will be very useful to us, policy makers in informing our policy making. This SLP is a large-scale longitudinal study among seniors aged 50 -70 years who are Singapore citizens and permanent residents, and will play an important role in helping us better formulate policies to support successful ageing. 

18.       Singapore is not alone in the world in tackling ageing, and we are always looking abroad for new findings and initiatives that could be applied locally. I am encouraged to see, collaborators who are also involved in other longitudinal health and retirement studies. This will enrich our discussion and help us learn from other countries’ best practices in policies and programmes for our seniors.

CONCLUSION

19.       In closing, I would like to congratulate SMU on the establishment of CREA. The research in CREA provides an important new dimension and further complements the ageing-related research being carried out in other centres in Singapore on the clinical, medical and social aspects of ageing. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage the various research centres to collaborate in an effort to integrate our understanding of ageing as a whole. A multi-disciplinary approach to the study of ageing will allow us to leverage the expertise available to create more innovative solutions and policies. Together, we can build a Nation for All Ages as we experience one of the most significant social transformations of the 21st century. 

20.       Let me wish you all a fruitful conference and for our overseas speakers, a pleasant stay in Singapore. Thank you.

^[1] Source: Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 315 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (HALE), 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. The Lancet. 2016 Oct

^[2] Households headed by a Singapore Resident aged 55 and over, based on DOS data