Trouble in Paradise?

With the recent death of its founder, Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state of Singapore has been much in the news. COTTonLINE's favorite demographer, Joel Kotkin, runs their numbers for The Daily Beast and finds pitfalls ahead for Mr. Lee's island paradise.

Real wages for ordinary Singaporeans have stagnated. From 1998 to 2008, the income of the bottom 20 percent of households dropped an average of 2.7 percent, while the salaries of the richest 20 percent rose by more than half.

For many Singaporeans, discontent has led them to consider a move elsewhere. Already some 300,000 citizens now live abroad, almost one of ten. As many as half of Singaporeans, according to a recent survey, would leave if they could.

Today Singapore has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates; and more young people are postponing or completely avoiding marriage (children out of wedlock remain very rare). The fertility rates in Singapore have fallen almost 50 percent below the replacement rate of 2.1.

COTTonLINE sees no particular reason to single out Singapore for these trends. Virtually every developed nation in the world is experiencing the same fertility collapse and increase in income inequality. Japan's problems are nearly identical, and Europe isn't far behind.