Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

SINGAPORE AND THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS 141
A CLASS STRUCTURE IN SINGAPORE
As the cultural identity of a particular class is achieved largely via its expressed
differences from other classes, a working delineation of the stratification struc ture
in Singapore is necessary. In addition to statistical information on the nature of
economic and material conditions, drawn from official reports and census data, we
also consider the assumptions of government policies regarding the consequences
of class.
Three decades of sustained economic growth (1965—95) have obliterated any
overt poverty in Singapore. However, poverty is unavoidably a matter of
contextual relative deprivation. Because of its ideological belief that property
ownership gives citizens a stake in the nation’s future, the ruling People’s Action
Party (PAP) government is committed to 100 per cent home-ownership. In this
context, poverty–at the household level–may be defined as the inability to own the
minimum public-housing flat, for a family of four. Such a definition is indeed the
basis of the existing housing policy which provides a cash grant of $30,000
towards the purchase of a three-room public-housing flat to any family of four
whose monthly income is less than $1,200. 4 The 1990 census shows that 21.3 per
cent of Singapore households are in this category (see Table 5.2). In general, these
families have lowly educated parents aged at least in their middle thirties, with lowincome
earning capacity and with children who are too young to contribute
economically to the household. They would constitute the lowest rung of the
production structure, often doing unskilled manual work. 5
Our estimate of the median monthly household income from the 1990
population census is approximately $2,300. To refine divisions among middle
income households, a consumption criterion needs to be added to the income
measure. Stringent regulations have made car ownership decidedly expensive. A
car is a high-status positional good which can be afforded only by those in the middle
class or higher, making it the premier cultural icon of the middle class in Singapore.
A household expenditure survey of 1987—8 indicates that about one-third of the
families within this middle-income range ($2,000—$2,499) are car owners (Dept of
Statistics 1989). It follows that households at the upper end of this income group
can be classified as being in the ‘middle’ class. By the same token, those between
the poverty line and the median may be considered the ‘working’ class. These are
likely to be families of blue-collar workers, some of whom achieve the middle-level
income by pooling the earnings of several family members. Approximately onethird
of households fall into this category.
Households with incomes between $2,300 and $6,000 constitute the largest
group in the population, accounting for more than 45 per cent of the total number
of households. As will be shown later, at the lower end of this group families continue
to struggle to maintain what would be conventionally labelled a middle-class
lifestyle, involving high-quality daily goods and services, annual vacations abroad
and car ownership. Only those at the top end, who are likely to be entrepreneurs