COVID-19 has brought into spotlight the inextricable relationship and potential of the built environment in promoting the health of its inhabitants while adapting to unprecedented changes in the way we live, work, and play in the evolving future.

Well-designed, ‘healthy’ buildings not only improve the physical and mental well-being of occupants under normal conditions, but can help minimise their risk of exposure to transmissible diseases.

This provides a tremendous opportunity for built environment professionals to develop future-resilient solutions to mitigate the other complex challenges confronting us – climate change and resource depletion amidst urbanisation.

Catalysts of change

This movement has received further impetus with the announcement of the Singapore Green Plan 2030 - an important, goal-driven approach to sustainable development in Singapore that fast-tracks existing environmental, social and governmental (ESG) measures, in order to align with the United Nation's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

It sets key targets concerning the future of the urban built environment in a comprehensive ten-year plan. They include an increased green cover to serve multiple ecosystems, and a whole-of-government approach to reducing waste and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions while maximising water and energy self-sufficiency.

They underline the fact that buildings can no more be viewed as mere utilitarian elements to accommodate life functions. They need to be treated as enablers of good environmental quality, that can be harnessed to accelerate positive impacts on health and well-being of the people and the planet.

Models of change

As we contemplate new paradigms of planning and design in a post-pandemic world, it is critical to shift our techno-centric, economic-based perspective of buildings that is predicated on a two-dimensional Gross Floor Area (GFA) metric rather than a three-dimensional volumetric spatial logic.

We need to emphasise a human-centric perspective to design, aligned to the volume occupied by each inhabitant – both indoors within buildings and outdoors in the urban environment. Especially in the hot and humid equatorial climate, the importance of natural ventilation and thermal comfort should not be understated. Non-residential buildings consume some 30 per cent of total electricity in Singapore, of which 60 per cent of this is used for air-conditioning.

The creation of unobstructed urban wind paths at the district level, coupled with intelligent, mixed ventilation modes integrated into building designs, serves to enhance human comfort with minimal energy costs and carbon expenditure.

At NUS, the School of Design and Environment (SDE) is spearheading this movement in conjunction with the “Well and Green” Campus initiative. It promotes new integrated infrastructural design solutions towards creating sustainable symbiotic natural and built environments.

We see evidence in the ongoing transformation of the SDE campus with four flagship buildings: SDE4 – Singapore’s first purpose-built net-zero energy building; SDE1 and 3 – a low carbon and super-low energy adaptive-reuse development; and a proposed SDE2 “hybrid” development which will be net-positive energy and net-zero water use. Special consideration will also be given to the choice of construction methods and materials, to track the total carbon use for the development.

SDE4 has become a major driver of change, a design prototype built on the opportunities of sustainable design and actively addressing the complexities of climate change in Singapore and the region.

The adaptive reuse of SDE1 and 3 demonstrates an effective strategy for renewing existing old buildings by introducing advanced high performance design solutions and optimising operational performance.

These buildings are forerunners in the NUS roadmap for carbon neutrality that aims to achieve a zero-carbon target by 2030, in alignment with the Singapore Green Plan 2030.

They represent aspirations that can positively influence the life cycle operations of future NUS buildings, exhibiting high performance standards and initiating public advocacy for healthy and sustainable buildings.

SDE has partnered with the Delos Well Living Lab, a global wellness pioneer, in catalysing measures for enhanced health and well-being in living spaces. This initiative has led to many other projects within NUS and Singapore embracing similar concepts. NUS is also the first university in the world to register for the WELL Portfolio pilot by the International WELL Building Institute.

SDE has also been working closely with the Ministry of National Development’s Centre for Liveable Cities on the concept of sustainable integrated districts, drawing upon many of the building and infrastructural solutions deployed in the SDE campus, to achieve ambitious urban sustainability goals.

The fundamental physical planning principles remain applicable for the future. The detailed design of certain “traditional” building types will have to be re-evaluated. However, the so-called “new normal” in the way we will live, work, and play in the post-COVID era will need to be carefully studied. We have to understand the impact on the individual and society’s health, which is defined by the WHO as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

About the author:

Professor Lam Khee Poh is the Dean of the NUS School of Design and Environment. Prof Lam is an architect, educator and researcher who specialises in computational design support systems for total building performance analysis and building diagnostics. He is a Director of the Centre for Liveable Cities, and Advisory Board Member of Delos, which established the world's first building standard focused exclusively on human health and wellness. He was awarded the 2013 Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation from the US National Science Foundation, and was conferred the inaugural iBuildSG LEAD Distinguished Fellow by the Building and Construction Authority in 2020.

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the seventh and final installment of the series.

Click here to read about Professor Tommy Koh's seven wishes for the year.

Click here to read about Professor Danny Quah's outlook for the global economy.

Click here to read about Dr Kelvin Seah's analysis of the Singapore economy and labour market.

Click here to read about Professor Freddy Boey's views of the start-up ecosystem.

Click here to read Professor Teo Yik-Ying's commentary on the great unknowns that remain, regarding COVID-19 vaccines.

Click here to read Associate Professor Irene Ng's reflections on the pandemic's impact on society. 

Economists use letters to describe the shape of recovery from recessions, and the current recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is given a new letter: K. This depicts a shape where some industries and individuals ascend, but the rest decline. In the midst of wage cuts, job losses and business closings, stock market prices have been rising and the Big Techs have been thriving.

The K-shaped trend is said to reflect existing inequalities. In this essay, I will discuss four types of inequalities in Singapore that have been spotlighted by the pandemic: wage, digital, residency and gender. I would like to suggest going beyond a business-as-usual response to these areas of inequality, failing which we would be wasting the lessons learned from the pandemic and the inequalities that were already there will further divide our society.

Wage inequality

First, wage inequality. Evidently, lowest-income earners have been the hardest hit. The latest income trends report by the Department of Statistics shows that on a per household member basis, earnings of households in the bottom 20 per cent declined the most (See Table 15C). A Beyond Social Service study of 1,231 beneficiaries found that the largest drops in work income were experienced by the lowest earning households.

Thankfully in Singapore, the government has rolled out multiple aid packages that are buffering the pain of the economic sting. At the same time, policy is responding to longer-term structural issues. For example, to uplift low-skilled wages, the progressive wage model (PWM) will be expanded to the retail and food services sector, with more to come. Coming nine years after the PWM was first introduced, this is long overdue.

It is strange to raise wages at a time when many businesses are suffering, but COVID-19 has spotlighted the fact that existing labour market forces are undervaluing essential work such as in the fields of F&B, cleaning and healthcare. Thus, there is no better time than now to extend the PWM to retail and food service workers, two sectors hard hit by COVID-19 restrictions yet whose workers (e.g. delivery riders and retail shop assistants) have to keep working in people-facing roles exposed to the virus. The momentum to correcting wage inequality needs to go beyond these two sectors.

Digital inequality

Second, digital inequality. At the top end, technology companies have been profiting so greatly in the last decades that western governments have mooted technology taxes and other restrictions. Now, COVID-19 restrictions have further boosted their profitability. At the bottom end, some children and adult learners from low-income households became unable to attend classes or do their homework when classes and assignments went online. Some did not have laptops, some did not have internet access at home, and many did not know how to use these resources. Some migrant workers and the elderly did not have the up-to-date devices, language or knowledge to use contact tracing applications and online services such as banking.

The tremendous outpouring of donations, volunteerism and government support has helped bring much-needed digital resources and knowledge to many low-income families, the elderly, and migrant workers. However, they have plugged only the current urgent gaps. As digital transformation accelerates post-pandemic, concerted and continuous actions to help these digitally excluded groups level up are necessary, or digital inequality will worsen the social inequalities that already disadvantages these vulnerable groups.

That is why some colleagues and I are advocating universal digital access, that access to digital devices, internet and digital skills are no longer wants but needs to be provided as public utilities like water, electricity and education. This rethinking of what are necessities in a digital world is but a small sliver of the paradigmatic changes that will be needed as coming digital transformations continue to worsen inequalities, from rehauling tax regimes to including non-traditional workers such as platform workers in labour protection laws.

Inequality in residency status

A third inequality is by residency status. Singapore’s response to the pandemic has been exemplary, except in one aspect which checkered our record. The rapid spread of the coronavirus in migrant worker dormitories highlighted the crammed living conditions in the dormitories. It prompted the building of less densely designed dormitories. At the same time, to contain the spread of the virus, restrictions on migrant workers were harsher and longer than they were for the rest of Singapore. Until end of last year, dormitory residents were not allowed out of their rooms. Till today, they are not allowed outside of the dormitories except to go to work, run essential services and visit specific recreation centres. The plans are for further easing once the workers all have a contact tracing device. In contrast, the rest of Singapore was out of the Circuit Breaker in June, and even when confined at home, our living environments are far superior.

The government has provided help to migrant workers, for example by ensuring payment of wages and working with volunteer groups to provide medical and mental health support. Looking ahead, commentators have called attention to this blight in our COVID-19 response as reflecting the fact that we are only as strong as how we treat the weakest in our land. They have called for a rethinking of our heavy reliance on low-skilled foreign workers, but others have drawn attention to the challenges of doing so, for example in terms of competitiveness and hiring local.

I wonder whether the debate should pivot away from these pragmatic considerations and towards one of considering equality and value as fellow humans. While the tight controls on dormitories are necessary to contain a deadly and infectious virus, it calls into question a stark segmentation in Singapore society. Foreign workers in Singapore make up a particular category of individuals with lower status than those who are residents. They are temporary workers treated differently in employment laws and in terms of access to health and social services.

Can we continue to find the resident-foreign worker duality in our society acceptable? If not, then the practical challenges around foreign worker issues will have to be dealt with no matter what.

Gender inequality

Fourth is gender inequality. 2021 has been declared the year of celebrating Singapore women. This is therefore a year to also dig deep to overcome existing gender fissures. Restrictions from COVID-19 have heightened the uneven distribution of home responsibilities along gender lines and the prevalence of domestic violence, whose victims are predominantly women and children. While social service professionals do the remedial work with families under repair, there is much opportunity for the rest of us in society to prevent the perpetuation of misogynistic and patriarchal ideologies, which underlie the ill-treatment of women.

The privileged in society have a role to play. First, not to perpetuate inequalities; second, to better understand the most vulnerable in society; and third, to use our privilege to speak up for and uplift the under-privileged. There is great influence when employers speak with other employers on behalf of employees; the digital haves advocate for equal access for the digital have-nots; citizens appeal to citizens on behalf of non-citizens; and men tell other men to respect women.

About the author

Associate Professor Irene Y.H. Ng is from the Department of Social Work at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and is Co-Director of the Social Service Research Centre at the Faculty. Assoc Prof Ng holds a joint Ph.D. in Social Work and Economics from the University of Michigan. Her research areas include poverty and inequality, intergenerational mobility, youth crime, and social welfare policy. She is serving or has served in committees in the Ministry of Social and Family Development, National Council of Social Service, Ministry of Manpower, and various voluntary welfare organizations.

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the sixth installment of the series.

Click here to read about Professor Tommy Koh's seven wishes for the year.

Click here to read about Professor Danny Quah's outlook for the global economy.

Click here to read about Dr Kelvin Seah's analysis of the Singapore economy and labour market.

Click here to read about Professor Freddy Boey's views of the start-up ecosystem.

Click here to read Professor Teo Yik-Ying's commentary on the great unknowns that remain, regarding COVID-19 vaccines.

The world greeted the arrival of 2021 with hope and anticipation of a return to pre-COVID normalcy, especially given the announcements that a handful of countries, including Singapore, have started vaccinating their populations against COVID-19.

The initial uncertainty over whether the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility will be able to honour its promise to deliver up to 2 billion vaccine doses to the 190 participating economies has now dissipated, when an announcement was made at the end of January of a concrete timeline to start dispatching vaccines to these economies.

The COVAX Advance Market Commitment also guarantees that the 92 lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will be able to equitably access highly subsidised COVID-19 vaccines at the same time as higher-income self-financing countries. This is necessary as LMICs would otherwise be priced out of the market if they have to bid against well-resourced countries for the same limited vaccine supply.

Ensuring an equitable distribution of efficacious vaccines to every country is a necessary step for the world to eventually return to some resemblance of pre-COVID normalcy. However, whether this is indeed as straightforward, the devil, as often the case, is in the details.

Let us examine the ‘three great unknowns’ about vaccines that continue to vex policymakers and public health scientists alike:

1. Does the vaccine prevent infection and transmission, on top of protecting against severe disease?

The present vaccines approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization (WHO) are primarily approved on the basis that they protect against severe disease and death, as those were the explicit outcomes vaccine developers defined in their late-stage clinical trials. What this means is that there is actually limited clinical trial data on whether these vaccines actually prevent a person from being infected in the first instance; or if infection is possible, to prevent infecting other people subsequently.

Without a definitive understanding on the role of vaccines against infection and transmission, governments globally have no choice but to continue the requirements of mask wearing, social distancing, and strict personal hygiene, even for people that have already received the vaccine.

However, encouraging evidence is starting to emerge that COVID-19 vaccines may just be as capable in limiting infections as in decreasing hospitalisations. A Nature article published in February reported an astounding fall in the number of infections and hospitalisations that corresponded strongly with the population rollout of COVID-19 vaccination in Israel, even after accounting for social restriction measures such as the implementation of a national lockdown.

While these are still early days and a careful analysis is needed to confirm this observation, it is clear that scientists view this as an encouraging sign that vaccines may have an effect on limiting infection and transmission, in addition to protecting against severe disease.

2. How long does the vaccine actually stay effective for?

Given that the world is relying on the COVID-19 vaccines to permit a lasting return to normalcy, we are certainly most eager to learn when their protective effects are likely to start waning. After all, this directly impacts national and global strategies on vaccine supply chains and vaccination rollout in the community, not to mention the thorny topic of repeated vaccine financing for LMICs that even COVAX is presently not actively contemplating.

Natural immunity to the four coronaviruses that are responsible for common colds are notoriously transitory, which explains why we continue to be plagued with colds throughout our lives. Should the protective immune response generated by the vaccine similarly wane with time, albeit after a longer period compared to the natural immunity from infection, regular booster vaccinations may become a reality. This was candidly outlined by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month, when he said the British people will have to get used to receiving autumn booster shots to retain the protective effects, either due to waning immunity or against new SARS-CoV-2 variants.

And this leads us to the third great unknown:

3. Mutations of SARS-CoV-2 and vaccine effectiveness

Perhaps the greatest fear now is whether today’s vaccines will continue to remain effective against new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Viruses continuously evolve to maintain their ability to survive and thrive in hostile competitive environments, and reports of how new emerging strains of the coronavirus are more transmissible should actually not come as a surprise. After all, when humans adapt with precautions such as mask wearing and social distancing, any mutation of the coronavirus that produces a much higher viral load or even allows farther airborne dispersion will grant the mutant strain a Darwinian advantage, thus ensuring a higher chance of successful propagation and reproduction.

Should mutations now permit the coronavirus to evade the protective effects of vaccines, as emerging evidence seem to suggest this to be the case for the South African 501.V2 variant against vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford-Astrazeneca, hopes that were originally pinned on the global distribution of efficacious vaccines for a return to normalcy would now need to be reexamined.

Global inequity will stifle global recovery

Compounding the three unknowns is the present global inequity in vaccine access. While COVAX aims to ensure an equitable distribution of vaccines, the present mandate primarily focuses on delivering vaccine doses to inoculate 20 per cent of the population in each participating country – estimated to be sufficient for the healthcare workforce and the elderly but far from adequate for the whole population.

What this means is that, except for the advanced economies that are capable of self-financing their vaccine purchases, most of the world’s countries may never have sufficient vaccine doses to inoculate 80 per cent of their population – a figure forecasted by infectious disease modelers to be necessary to achieve herd immunity.

How will global commerce and travel look when border restrictions remain for the most parts of the world? Health inequities that already existed before COVID-19 are likely to be compounded, and the divide between the haves and have-nots looks set to widen when economies that have traditionally relied on subsistence-based agriculture, labour-intensive manufacturing, and tourism receipts may just be the ones that will find vaccines to be priced beyond their reach.

Domestically, countries also need to grapple with the challenge of equitably distributing vaccines to oft-neglected segments of the population, which include refugees and migrant workers. The latter is especially tricky in countries with large communities of undocumented migrant workers who do not possess any legal status or health insurance. Extending national vaccination rollouts to include these people may be morally and ethically the right thing to do, but is not straightforward logistically and financially, especially in the absence of a census. How would one even determine the number of vaccine doses required or register the inoculation of these people?

The concern around ‘vaccine refugees’, where people from a resource-poor country illegally cross the border of a wealthier neighbour to be vaccinated as a refugee or undocumented migrant worker, is also a real one. In settings where there are already insufficient vaccine doses for all the citizens, inoculating non-citizens will also be politically tricky to justify.

So, while there is certainly optimism in some societies about an incipient return to pre-COVID normalcy, it is important to realise this optimism is not universal, and a global recovery can and will be thwarted by vaccine nationalism and inequitable distribution.

The journey to the light at the end of the tunnel will continue to be fraught with obstacles and uncertainties, and we would be wise to manage our expectations for 2021.

About the author

Professor Teo Yik-Ying is the Dean of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. Prior to his Deanship, he was the Founding Director of the School’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research (CHSPR) and also served as the Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research (CIDER) from 2015 to 2017. He is presently a member on the Council of Scientists for the International Human Frontier Science Program, as well as a governing board member of the Regional Centre for Tropical Medicine and Public Health Network for Southeast Asia.

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the fifth installment of the series.

Click here to read about Professor Tommy Koh's seven wishes for the year.

Click here to read about Professor Danny Quah's outlook for the global economy.

Click here to read about Dr Kelvin Seah's analysis of the Singapore economy and labour market.

Click here to read about Professor Freddy Boey's views of the start-up ecosystem.

2020 was dominated by COVID-19, with the pandemic pushing healthcare systems to the brink, contracting the global economy, and ending the lives of more than 1.8 million people around the world.

For the tech start-up ecosystem, fears of a bleak investment climate and mass closures were summarised by The New York Times as the “Great Unwinding,” with Sequoia Capital warning its start-ups that the virus was the “the black swan of 2020”. Twelve months into the pandemic and the outlook is more nuanced: COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, led to the evolution of businesses and industries, and generated numerous innovations applicable to the fight against this and future pandemics. While some start-ups have thrived in the crisis and others have buckled, no other event in recent memory has done a better job at highlighting the disruptive role of technology.

As the reverberations of COVID-19 will continue to be felt into the new year, here are five key takeaways, industries and trends start-ups need to keep an eye on in 2021.

1. Crisis yields opportunity

Where the coronavirus laid bare the weaknesses of societies in managing the pandemic, start-ups are helping to fill the gap. With unprecedented challenges unique in their complexity and urgency, the current climate offers countless opportunities for start-ups to pivot, adapt and innovate to meet the moment.

An example is our former incubatee Biofourmis, which customised its AI-powered remote monitoring technology for COVID-19 in just two weeks, helping to free up hospital space, protect doctors from unnecessary exposure, and enable early medical intervention for better outcomes. To date, close to 100,000 COVID-19 patients around the world have used the Biofourmis platform.

As we look forward, we expect start-ups to be a driving force in charting a post-COVID world. Innovations related to the direct or indirect effects of the pandemic will continue to emerge. Businesses and consumers are also reassessing their priorities and preferences in the wake of the crisis, and start-ups will need to anticipate these shifting trends in order to remain relevant. But by forcing start-ups to focus on worthier problems and solve real needs, the pandemic has also given them the opportunity to emerge stronger and more resilient.

2. Digital transformation is not an option

Importantly, the crisis demonstrated that businesses which have invested in digital transformation were significantly better prepared to meet the challenges wrought by the pandemic than those who have not. Upending entire industries, COVID-19 forced companies to drastically accelerate the adoption of new technologies: schools moved to e-learning platforms; groceries and restaurants shifted to online ordering and delivery; retailers embraced e-commerce; the healthcare industry increased telehealth options; hotels incorporated new contactless and robotic technologies for guest services; and banks are providing more digital services in the wake of physical branch closures. The list goes on.

Summarising the change, a McKinsey survey revealed the crisis had vaulted us “five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks”. In 2021, we expect digital transformation to remain at the top of company priorities, with successful adoption helping to build company agility and strength. Moreover, those that embrace the shift to a “new normal” as an opportunity for fundamental transformation will be better placed to weather future crises. This will require investment in technology, manpower upskilling and training as well as a culture that embraces innovation and change.

3. Physical location will matter less

It took a global pandemic to put to rest the myth that employees could only be productive if working from the office. While we anticipate that more jobholders will return to their workplaces in 2021, we also expect there to be greater flexibility in work arrangements as employers try to balance the efficiency of a virtual workforce with the benefits of face-to-face interaction. The same holds for the education sector, as well as the events industry: the future is hybrid.

For start-ups, this translates into new opportunities to reimagine nearly every aspect of daily life. Demand for virtual work and e-learning technologies, collaboration tools, video conferencing, and online event and meeting platforms are likely to continue. Cybersecurity will also become increasingly important as privacy and security concerns arise with digital transformation.

Moreover, as technologies like Zoom become normalised and big tech conferences move online, investors will grow more comfortable with sourcing deal flow online and start-ups will have increased access to talents and partners beyond their localities. Energy and resources will also be funnelled into growing online communities and innovation and enterprise (I&E) hubs, with physical location seen as less of a barrier to start-up growth.

We are already beginning to see the benefits of this change. More than 400 investors, venture capitalists (VCs), corporates, and industry players attended our recent virtual Lift-Off Day for GRIP Run 4 to hear our deep-tech teams pitch their solutions - a larger number than we could have hosted had the event been held in person.

4. It’s time to get serious about food security

Panic buying and disrupted supply chains during COVID-19 have highlighted how fragile food security can be. For a land-scarce country like Singapore, which imports more than 90 per cent of its food, the situation is even more acute. Because of this, the government has set the ambitious goal of producing 30 per cent of the nation’s nutritional needs by 2030 under its “30 by 30” initiative.

Many of our start-ups are already contributing to this vision: GRIP graduate Polybee is building autonomous solutions for pollination and NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) alum start-up Archisen operates one of the highest yielding indoor farms in Singapore, producing up to 100 tonnes of vegetables a year.

For its part, NUS is also committing more resources toward this space. In 2021, we will open the NUS Agritech Centre, a sandbox for scientists, entrepreneurs and industry to testbed and explore market-based solutions. Complete with precision climate chambers and grow zones, the facility will enable experimentation and acceleration in the agritech and foodtech industries.

5. Universities will play a bigger role in venture creation

Monumental events have the ability to reshape the research landscape, and we expect COVID-19 to be no different. While country lockdowns restricted movement and enforced social isolation, the nature of science became more open and collaborative during this time, with the urgency to develop a vaccine fueling the sharing of information and data. Importantly, the pandemic underscored the importance of investment in both basic and applied research, as well as the university’s role in contributing to the generation of ground-breaking technologies and solutions.

For university innovation and enterprise offices (IEOs), the situation offers a chance to ease the path for technology commercialisation and take a more proactive role in venture creation. In recent years, NUS has built upon its foundational infrastructure of entrepreneurial education and incubation to provide more intensive and structured support for the spin-out of technology-based ventures, notably through GRIP. Iterations of this methodology have been deployed in other programmes, such as GRIP MAKE, which targets recent graduates, and the Venture Building Programme, a partnership with Enterprise Singapore. In 2021, we will further these efforts by launching a first-of-its-kind MSc in Venture Creation programme, as well as a Technology Access Programme (TAP) for professionals, each of which is designed to likewise accelerate the commercialisation of university research into impactful and sustainable deep-tech companies.

About the author

Professor Freddy Boey is the Deputy President for Innovation & Enterprise at NUS. He oversees the University’s initiatives and activities for innovation, as well as entrepreneurship and research translation. An academic and inventor, Prof Boey has pioneered the use of functional biomaterials for medical devices in Singapore, developed 127 patents, founded several companies, and been published in 347 top journals with 23,555 citations. An alumnus of NUS, Prof Boey previously served as the Deputy President and Provost of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) from 2011-2017.

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the fourth installment of the series.

Click here to read about Professor Tommy Koh's seven wishes for the year.

Click here to read about Professor Danny Quah's outlook for the global economy.

Click here to read about Dr Kelvin Seah's analysis of the Singapore economy and labour market. 

“This is the worst year ever to graduate”, a student from my honours class said to me last year. His sentiment was perhaps shared by many in the graduating class of 2020. I could sense the anxiety in them. Never had I received so many emails from students, anxiously seeking advice on how they could enhance their chances of getting a job.

2020 saw economies all over the world, including Singapore, battered by COVID-19. And along with them, their labour markets. In Singapore, monthly resident unemployment rate rose gradually all through 2020 to hit a high of 4.8 percent in October.

Fast forward to 2021 and things are seemingly starting to improve. The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s December 2020 Survey of Professional Forecasters has projected that Singapore’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will recover in 2021 and grow by 5.5 per cent.

At the same time, statistics released by the Ministry of Manpower early this year indicate that resident unemployment rate had fallen in November 2020 compared with October 2020, registering the first such drop in 2020. So it seems Singapore has done pretty well in comparison to many other countries. The question is: will this continue?

Is the worst over?

While the fall in unemployment rate and the recovery in GDP are welcome news, we should not take this to mean that we are out of the woods. It would be premature to conclude that the worst is over based on a short-term improvement in just one or two economic indicators. We’ll need a larger set of economic indicators, all of which consistently point towards recovery for a sustained period, to be sure. And even this may not be enough. Because things could quickly change depending on global developments. And these are not within our control.

Singapore is a small open economy which is heavily reliant on global trade and investments. Whether our economy will continue on its path to recovery therefore depends crucially on what happens externally. In particular, it depends on whether countries can successfully contain the virus.

As long as countries continue to see recurrent waves of COVID-19 infections, our road to recovery will be bumpy and unpredictable. For it will mean that movements of people and trade will continue to be restricted. And this will have a dampening effect on economic activity. Aviation, hospitality, tourism, and certain export sectors will continue to be badly affected. This will have ripple effects on the rest of the economy.

Challenge for policymakers

Of course, the development of COVID-19 vaccines have been an encouraging prospect. And if governments across the world can convince their people to vaccinate and protect themselves from the virus, then we can be hopeful that restrictions on movement, trade, and consumer activity will gradually be relaxed. But this will not be easy.

Misinformation on vaccines is constantly circulating on social media, preventing people from making well-informed decisions. According to a survey by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), close to 1 in 4 Singapore residents believe in a false claim that COVID-19 vaccines will alter one’s DNA, with older residents – those most at risk of being infected by COVID-19 – more likely to believe such a falsehood.

It may therefore not be surprising to know that a considerable fraction of our residents do not want to get vaccinated. Indeed, a Straits Times survey conducted in late 2020 found that some 18 percent of residents would not want to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of whether one was available today or in six to 12 months. This is despite the government announcing that it would provide the vaccine for free. This is worrying because it means that many people will remain susceptible to the virus. So one challenge for policymakers is to find ways to convince their people that the vaccines are safe and effective and to address the problem of misinformation.

Support likely to continue, but sustainability is key

Compared with many other countries, workers in Singapore have been relatively unscathed by the pandemic. True, there have been some retrenchments, and for many, finding a job has been tough. But the situation seems to be under control; unemployment rates in Singapore (although elevated) are nowhere as high as in places like the United States or Hong Kong. Part of the reason is due to the suite of measures introduced by the government to help support jobs.

And among these measures, one stands out – the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS). The JSS, which was first introduced in Budget 2020 and which has since been enhanced and extended, provides wage support to employers to help them retain their local employees.

Under this scheme, the government co-funds some portion of each local employee’s gross monthly wages. This decreases the labour costs borne by companies and provides incentives to retain local workers. Firms in sectors most hard hit by the pandemic are poised to receive these wage subsidies up until March this year while firms in sectors which are managing better received the subsidies till December last year. The JSS has been instrumental in keeping unemployment rates relatively low.

However, it is not a long-term solution. The government will not be able to extend the JSS indefinitely because its coffers are limited. As Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat rightly put it, “We cannot sustain the JSS at current levels…It draws heavily on our reserves and risks trapping our workers in unviable businesses”.

At some point, the government will have to pull the plug on the scheme. The question is: when? Timing is important. If done too little, too early, we risk withdrawing fiscal stimulus prematurely and pushing Singapore deeper into a recession. If done too much, too late, we risk chalking up a hefty deficit, which future generations will have to bear.

What can we expect for the Singapore economy and the labour market in 2021? As discussed, a lot will depend on how things play out internationally (whether countries will be able to contain the virus, how bilateral relations between the US and China unfold, and more).

Expectations for Budget 2021

At home, we can expect policy to remain expansionary. DPM Heng is set to unveil Budget 2021 in just a few days, on 16 Feb, and already he has hinted that a key priority for the Budget would be to help workers and businesses adapt, innovate and grow. We can therefore expect support for workers and businesses through schemes such as the JSS and the SGUnited Jobs and Skills package to continue.

However, we should also expect that the extent of help will be reduced compared to 2020, since the government needs to keep its spending in check. Support will likely be more targeted, with the bulk of the assistance channelled to those workers and businesses who need it the most – the ones struggling to recover.

Aside from financial assistance, we can also expect Budget 2021 to be centred on economic transformation, where schemes to grow the innovation capabilities of companies and workers to take on the post-COVID world will likely be introduced and strengthened.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, this expansionary stance will mitigate the ill effects of the virus and should help to keep unemployment at manageably low levels.

About the author

Dr Kelvin Seah is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at NUS Arts and Social Sciences. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). His research interests are in the areas of labour economics and the economics of education.

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the third installment of the series.

Click here to read about Professor Tommy Koh's seven wishes for the year.

Click here to read about Professor Danny Quah's outlook for the global economy.

If 2020 was the year of Coronavirus, then 2021 is that of aftermath. Today Singapore stands delicately poised on recovery, but the great majority of the world elsewhere continues to see COVID19 flare-up. In any pandemic, no one is safe until everyone is. For both the world and Singapore economies all steps into 2021 will need to be cautious.

Principles, however, can help guide the way ahead. Here I describe two.

Planning for a sustained recovery

The first principle is that balance and care are needed more than ever in this economic recovery. Consideration to public health will factor to be important in ways it never was before. This leads to subtle new pathways for achieving sustained economic prosperity.

This economic downturn from which we now seek recovery is unlike practically all others in recent history. No external shock drove enthusiasm out of investors so they stopped seeking to build out new businesses and enterprises. No exogenous collapse in confidence convinced consumers they no longer wanted to purchase goods and services, There was no dizzying acceleration in asset prices that suddenly burst to make everyone’s pocketbooks that much tighter.

Instead, this downturn was negotiated, by responsible policy-makers, to curtail inter-human contact, so the world could be safe, and reduce infection and death. COVID19 made society-wide illness deadlier than just the sum of individual occurrence, through the danger of incipient runaway transmission and the threat of collapse of a national health system. A negotiated economic downturn was the right thing to do.

But then it folllows that sustained economic recovery will come not from just fiscal or monetary bazooka firepower. After all, simple-mindedly, if these latter turned out to be successful, they would just overturn the earlier judicious and appropriate public health safeguards. A left hand would simply have taken away what the right hand provided in the first place.

But, at the same time, economies cannot languish for too long before a damaging hysteresis sets in, permanently reducing the capacity for future prosperity.

Economic policy for recovery therefore becomes a matter of timing and of keeping our worker and business resources strong in reserve, rather than looking for the economy to come roaring back through pump-priming or unleashed credit.

Economic activity with limited human contact

Beyond getting the timing right, effort needs to go into de-linking economic activity from dangerous inter-human contact. Such decoupling might happen through new work methods such as increased reliance on telepresence using digital infrastructure (through Zoom-derived co-working, digitalisation, telelocation); improved human resilience to the virus (through vaccines); or reconfiguring our understanding of physical proximity (through mask wearing, contact tracing, density reduction, social distancing, and movement controls). All these restore the possibility for employment and wealth creation in their different multi-varied forms, without compromising humanity’s safety due to the Coronavirus.

Given these considerations, we should not now lament the demise of kinder, gentler, human-touch ways of doing business. The tradeoff between economic activity that creates wealth and value, on the one hand, and effective distancing to keep us safe, on the other, is now hard reality; it is not a soft constraint that can be circumvented.

To be clear, however, none of this translates to closing borders between nations or rolling back global integration. Just as economic activity needs to take place in any given nation for all its citizens to become prosperous, so too is everyone’s well-being enhanced through exchange between people of different nations.

That the global economy and Singapore’s economy need careful recalibration is evident from statistics. Economic well-being derives not only from how absolutely well off people are but also from people’s expectations and experience. Between 2010 and 2019 Singapore’s economy grew 4.9 per cent per year. In IMF’s estimation the 2020 COVID-induced downturn shrank Singapore’s GDP by 6 per cent. This means that if, as IMF forecasts, Singapore’s 2021 economic growth is 5 per cent, the economy, looking into 2021, will not be just smaller than what it was in 2019. Indeed, its size will be considerably below what the pre-COVID decadal trend implied (i.e., what Singaporeans have come to expect). For Singapore’s economy to recover its trend path by 2023, GDP will have to grow 17 per cent in 2022! This is not impossible, but will need considerable policy thinking while, at the same time, carefully monitoring the public health situation.

Using IMF’s World Economic Outlook estimates, I have calculated that to recover to each economy’s trend, the world economy will need to grow 11 per cent in 2022; all emerging markets and developing economies, by 13 per cent; ASEAN, by 14 per cent. Even China, the only major economy in 2020 to show positive growth, will need 13 per cent growth in 2022 to fully recover its trend level. Will these be achievable? Much hinges on how successfully technology will allow de-linking of economic activity from national COVID re-infection.

What is evident, however, is that today ten months after widespread acknowledgement of a global pandemic, genuine recovery - whether on COVID-19 or economic fronts - remains distant. The time remains some way in the future still for pivoting towards other economic policy considerations - national debt overhang; creative destruction of non-viable businesses, over-heating, and inflation. These are all important policy challenges, but only in due course. Given the state of the world and Singapore economies, they are not high-priority problems.

The complexity of inequality

The second principle I propose: Inequality has become a lot more complicated.

It has of course become commonplace to observe how the Coronavirus has sharpened inequality in societies. Rich families find it easier to navigate shutdown when they can afford the space and technology to allow work from home for parents and home-learning for children. Low-paid physical laborers who are told to stay home and are not allowed to go to work suffer yet further falls in their already low incomes.

All this is true. But it’s also true that the richest societies on the planet have been among the worst and most lethally affected by COVID-19. The world has seen 275 COVID19 deaths per million people. The economies who have been considered relatively successful in this include China (3 deaths per million), New Zealand (5), Singapore (5), and Taiwan (0.3). Rich Trans Atlantic economies? The US has seen an astounding 1,300 deaths per million; the UK, 1,500; EU, 1,000; Germany, 630. In contrast, much poorer economies? Vietnam, 0.4; Mauritius, 8; Tajikistan, 9; Thailand, 1. Rich economies in the world have had a very bad time with the Coronavirus.

The correlation between high incomes and high death rates is not strict of course: Many poor societies have suffered terribly too. But the stylisation is simply inaccurate that there is a tight relation between income distribution and COVID suffering, or that income inequality is a sufficient statistic for understanding COVID’s impact on well-being.

The lesson, instead, is this: More important than just the fact of inequality itself, is how people and policy-makers deal with the circumstances in which they find themselves, i.e., how much agency and control they exert over their environment. Some poorer economies and people have managed matters well; some richer economies and people, less so. What matters for agency and control is how much resources a decision-maker can harness, not whether society around that decision-maker is more or less unequal.

If we combine these observations on managing the Coronavirus’s deadly effects with my first principle - that economic recovery will be unusual, not least in its needing to pay close attention to health impacts - prospects are dim for strong growth from the traditional centres and the consumption bulwarks of the world economy. So too reduced will be the respect, admiration, and consent to be governed paid to those centres by the rest of the world.

This flattening of the world’s power hierarchy across nations has the same character as those that have occurred within nations, where relations between rich and poor have been rewired, due to national conversations on inequality and social mobility.

Looking towards a new world order

This leads me to the last implication to draw here. Looking into 2021, the traditional view of both world and social order will see adjustment. This is not a statement about what needs to be done to re-set the world; it is just a statement of fact.

Within societies, the call for greater social mobility and for re-examining social hierarchies is already viewed by many to be compelling. Across nations, there is similar re-scrutiny of why traditional centres of world leadership might no longer remain centres of world leadership. Conventional explanations for international power hierarchies - who is a Great Power, who is not - that draw on differences in incomes and productivity, or reputation for successful policy management, now show obvious failings. What new principles should replace those ideas that have supported the international system of this past half-century, that relied on rich-nation Trans-Atlantic leadership? Performance legitimacy will have to be importantly taken into account, but what else? For other clues on what world order will look like, observers will need to study closely the experiences in 2020, the year of Coronavirus, and in 2021, the year of aftermath.

About the author

Professor Danny Quah is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS, where he is also the Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics. His research interests include income inequality and international relations. On the latter, he takes an economic approach to world order — with focus on global power shifts and the rise of the East. Prof Quah was previously Assistant Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then Professor of Economics and International Development at the London School of Economics, where he was also Head of Department for Economics.

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the second installment of the series.

Click here to read about Professor Tommy Koh's seven wishes for the year.

The year 2020 will go down in history as a disastrous year. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed over 1.7 million people and infected over 81 million people. The economic impact of the pandemic has produced the worst global recession since the Great Depression. The human cost is incalculable: millions of businesses destroyed, even more people rendered jobless and widespread poverty and human misery. Against this background, I wish to make seven wishes for 2021.

Wish no. 1: The pandemic to fade away

I fervently wish that in 2021, COVID-19 will gradually fade away. I hope that the rich countries will help the poor countries to acquire the vaccines and a big majority of the adult population of the world will be vaccinated. Why should the rich countries do this? Because no one is safe unless every one is safe.

Wish no. 2: More attention on healthcare

My second wish is for all the governments of the world to pay greater attention to their healthcare systems. Are they ready for the next, possibly worst, pandemic? Do they have enough respirators and intensive care units in their hospitals? Do they have enough specialists in infectious diseases? Do they have enough doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers? Do they have the capacity to identify, isolate and trace? They should fill in the gaps and upgrade their healthcare systems, both physical and human. The next pandemic may be worse than COVID-19.

Wish no. 3: A stronger WHO

My third wish is to strengthen the World Health Organisation (WHO). I am glad that the incoming Biden Administration has announced that the United States will rejoin the WHO. Over the years, the western members of the WHO has systematically reduced the financial resources of the WHO. This tragic mistake should be reversed. The WHO should be adequately funded and staffed to that it can play its indispensable role, even more effectively in the future.

Wish no. 4: A global economic recovery

My fourth wish is for the recovery of the world economy. I hope that the aviation and travel industries will bounce back. I am concerned by the plight of the workers in the cultural, sporting and entertainment industries. I am also concerned by many young people who are self-employed and who have been rendered jobless. In our economic recovery, we should focus on both the big and small business. We should never lose sight of the fact that when we talk about the economy we are really talking about the people and their welfare and livelihood.

Wish no. 5: Reduction in inequality

My fifth wish is for us to do something about the inequalities of our society. The pandemic magnified those inequalities. Let us resolve to improve the living conditions of the foreign workers in their dormitories. Let us resolve to help the elderly poor in our midst with a more generous allowance, with cooked food and befrienders. Let us show more appreciation for and respect to the foreign workers, who are often treated as an invisible people or second-class human beings.

Wish no. 6: Care for the environment

My sixth wish is to treat our planet with care and love. We, human beings, have not been good stewards of the planet. Due to our activities, we have caused global warming and climate change. We are destroying our biodiversity and their ecosystems. We are degrading the oceans with overfishing, pollution and warming and acidification. Let us implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change faithfully. Let us stop the pollution of the oceans with plastic waste. Let us treasure, not destroy, the nature around us.

Wish no. 7: Global cooperation

My final wish is for human solidarity. The crises of 2020 have shown us more clearly than ever before that we live in one inter-connected world. To survive and prosper in this world, there is no substitute for international cooperation, both at the regional and global levels. We must therefore strengthen, not weaken, our multilateral institutions.

About the author

Professor Tommy Koh is Professor at NUS Law, and the Rector of NUS Tembusu College. He is also Ambassador-at-Large at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Chairman of the Centre for International Law of NUS; and Special Advisor of the Institute of Policy Studies at NUS. A veteran diplomat and academic, Prof Koh’s former roles include being Dean of NUS Law (1971-1974), Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1968-1971 and 1974-1984), and Singapore’s Chief Negotiator for the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (2000-2003).

Looking to 2021 is a series of commentaries on what readers can expect in the new year. This is the first installment of the series.