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Singapore’s Poor Law

Farquhar

A Dickensian reprieve for low-income groups

The authorities, concerned by the trend of the falling purchasing power of low-income groups, devise a means-tested sliding-scale of wage supplements in an attempt to mitigate poverty. Recourse to relief is implicitly discouraged through stringent tests, meagre payoffs and the social stigma of pauperism. Such access is to be deliberately made as difficult as possible, on the premise that doing otherwise would allow conniving vagrants to overrun the system.

The above might sound somewhat like Singapore’s cautious approach to helping low-income groups, but it’s actually a leaf out of pre-modern Britain’s Poor Laws. That anachronistic system was the country’s main provision for social security from the 16th century until the advent of the welfare state at the turn of the 20th century.