Your views: Household income - 60% of Singaporeans may be in debt

I refer to the household income from 2003 released in Sep 2005: http://www.singstat.gov.sg/ssn/feat/sep2005/pg1-7.pdf

Below is the average household income-expenditure:

Lowest 20% of households average income of S$795 per month(p.m.)average household expenditure of S$1,259.00 p.m.

Next 20% of households average income S$2,059.00 p.m.average household expenditure S$2,100.00 p.m.

Next 20% of households average income S$3,379.00 p.m.average household expenditure S$2,797.00 p.m.

Next 20% of households average income S$5,309.00 p.m.average household expenditure S$3,904.00 p.m.

Next 20% of households average income S$12,792.00 p.m.average household expenditure S$6,160.00 p.m.

Each household is occupied by 3.6 people, and taking the population at calender YE2005 of 4,351,000 citizens/residents, we have 1.2 million households. Every 20% percentile equals 240,000 households.

This means that there are potentially 720,000 families who cannot make ends meet every month (they have nothing left to save for rainy days).

Some have to resort to loans and credit spending. If we put wage cuts for CPF, and add expenditure items like mortgage repayments, GST, COE, ERP, income tax, etc. into consideration, the scenario is even grimer.

I hope the government can so something to solve this bread-and-butter issue instead of hiding it in the closet and get the media to write rosy news reports.


DeArcher