The Singaporean welfare state system : with special reference to public housing and the CPF

Abstract

This chapter illuminates the ways in which the Singapore state’s approach toward public goods, despite its recent heavy rhetoric around ‘social inclusion’ and some moves toward expansion, maintains a limited sense of mutual obligations among citizens and instead institutionalizes individualism and differentiated deservedness. This is a welfare regime in which access to public housing, healthcare, childcare, and retirement security continues to depend upon specific constellations of individualized practices. Indeed, performing ‘the family’ in specific gendered and heteronormative ways is crucial to ensuring social security in Singapore.