Singapore Country Report

Name: Qiyuan Chen

Class: PS104-02

Date: 03/21/2016

Country Profile: Singapore

General Indicators.

• Capital, size of population living within the capital: Singapore, Singapore, 5.5 million. (2016)
• Current male population: 2771525, 50.4% (2016)
• Current female population: 2726456, 49.6% (2016)
• Area: 693 Square kilometers (268 Square Miles)
• Population: 5497981. (2016)
• Population Growth Rate: 0.82 % (2015)
• Population dynamics (2016): 128 live births average per day (5.33 in an hour), 74 deaths average per day (3.10 in an hour), 70 immigrants average per day (2.90 in an hour)

Economic Indicators:

• GDP (PPP): $293 billion (2015)
• Per Capita GDP (PPP): $ 53,004 (2015)
• Distribution of GDP：Construction 5.2%, Transportation and storage 7.4%, Finance and Insurance 12.6%, Business Service 15.5%, Wholesale and Retail Trade 15.5%, Manufacturing 19.8%. (2015)
• Urban Population: 100% (2015)
• Population below poverty line: 26%(2011)
• Labour force participation rate (Ratio of female to male shares): 68.3%(2015)
• Debt as Percentages of GDP: 105.24%(2016)
• Debt per Citizen: $71.487(2016)

Analysis Section:

For this section, it covered the general indicators and economic indicators in the Singapore. In the first, the GDP(PPP) is the abbreviation of Gross domestic product which means the monetary value of all the finished products and services offered in this country during the specific period time. In the other words, it can also be understood as the total values of the goods and services that this country makes in the period time.

In the second, the GDP in my country China is $12,253.98 billion. We could see there is a huge difference between these two countries. But this does not mean that Singapore is a poor country. On the contrary, Singapore is a developed country in the world, but China is not. The reason why could be the population of the country. China has 1,382,323,332 people in the current 2016, but Singapore just have 5.5 million. So the more population the country has, the more values of total products and services that the country produce. In the other words, the Per Capital GDP of China is $7,590, and the Singapore is $56,284.6. This could be a good reason why that Singapore is a developed country though its GDP is less than China.

Social Indicators:

• Human Development Index (HDI) Ranking (and value): 11(0.912) (2014)
• Gender Inequality Index (GII) Value:13 (0.088) (2014) 
• Infant Mortality Rate: 2.04 (2016)
• Life Expectancy: 84.95 years (Males, 82.31years, Females, 87.78 years) (2016)
• Literacy: 95.9%( 98% male, 93.8% female) (2010)
• Religions: Buddhism 32.4%, Christianity 19.0%, Islam 14.0%, Taoism 10.9%, Hinduism 5.0%, others 0.7%, not religious 18.8% (2015)
• Environmental Performance Index (EPI) Ranking (and score):4 (99.65) (2015)
• Language spoken: Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English.

Analysis section:

For this section, the human development index is the measurement to measure the quality of living in this country, and also to determine the purpose that this country want to develop. In the formula of this index, it covered the life expectancy index, education index, incoming index and so on. Therefore, this index can be used to compare two countries’ development.

In the second, in my country China, the human development index is 0.727 which is rank 90 in 2014. This is not a very good index, because China is still a developing country. So it is still working on its expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, and gross national income (GNI) per capita. However, Singapore has already done a really good job in developing its education and economy these years. This is the reason why Singapore is the rank 11 in all over the world in 2014. Moreover, I think the other reason that Singapore could get the high rank in those indexes is because it is a small country. Everything in Singapore could be easy to manage because it is small. So it can develop very quickly in these years. But China is not the same story, the mainland of China is huge, the size of population is huge. So government cannot manage every single individual easily. In the other words, it is impossible to do that, though China issue tones of welfare policies for poor states and people.