More than one in four people in Singapore is now a foreigner. The rise in the number of foreigners has also outpaced the rate of growth for citizens, according to this year's census figures. There are now one million more people compared to ten years ago. The median age in Singapore has gone up from 29 in 1990 to 34 now. The trend could be tied to the movement of post war baby boomers into the older age brackets, Chief Statistician Dr Paul Cheung said.
Females now outnumber males for the first time.
There are now 998 males for every 1,000 females. Dr Cheung attributed this to migration, as a large number of PRs are women married to Singapore men, and to the fact that women outlive men. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on 27 Aug 2000 announced that civil servants can now look forward to three days' paternity leave for their first three children. He said that the new measures announced at the National Day Rally on 20 Aug 2000 were meant to help overcome some of the obstacles that Singaporeans faced in getting married and having children. If it does not improve, the Chinese resident population will decline by 2020.