Census 2020: Disability, Age and Sex
Well as you might have known, I am a nerd and I really love looking at numbers and statistics to generate conclusions of my own. The recent census of population offers very insightful statistics on our resident population. In this series I will attempt to break down the information and create a causal relationship amongst different aspects of our population, such as age, sex, geographic distribution, religion, employment, etc. Race is a pretty big thing nowadays too, so why not?
The first part of our series will be targeted at something that bothers both Singaporeans and the government alike—disability. Or to be exact, the ability of perform a Basic Activity. Basic Activities refer to seeing, hearing, mobility (walking or climbing steps), remembering or concentrating, self-care (washing all over or dressing), and communicating (understanding or being understood), as explained in the Census.
For the first time in our history, data on measuring the difficulty in performing Basic Activities is captured in our census. Although different in definition as compared to the more commonly known Activities of Daily Living, these data are relevant in determining the kind of social and medical support that our resident population we would expect in the future while we enter an ageing society.
The Census of Population 2020 classify the ability to performing Basic Activities into 3 categories:
No Difficulty;
Some Difficulty; and
Unable to Perform/A lot of Difficulty
For the purpose of this article, I have merged the latter two categories, just to differentiate those who have totally no difficulty, and those who would face difficulty, regardless of extent.
Residents Facing Difficulties in Performing Basic Activities, by Sex
Difficulty in Performing Basic Activities, by Age Group
In my opinion this data could be made more effective if there are breakdown of those beyond Age 65, which is the retirement age. It would have been common sense that the elderly has a higher proportion of facing difficulties at performing Basic Activities. Anyway, among the 619,001 residents above Age 65 in Singapore, 37.2% of them have difficulties performing at least one Basic Activity.
It has always been thought that men tend to suffer from such disabilities more often than women. Maybe because more men engage in riskier jobs? Or maybe men tend to do stupid things (like speeding, fighting, reckless driving, etc)?
Interestingly, more women are unable to perform Basic Activities as compared to men in the retirement years. In fact, so many women suffer from this in their old age, that this disparity has caused the female population to appear as the majority of disabled residents. This is an important point to note in the field of financial planning as they would be more likely to be exposed to longevity risk and morbidity risk. Let’s have an quick Zoom discussion to find out more on how to mitigate such risks!
Let’s now take a closer look on specific basic activities based on one’s biological sex. Women tend to be the majority in almost all categories, but as mentioned above, women are usually in the majority only in their retirement years.
You can see that people face difficulties in three main areas: Seeing, Mobility and Remembering. Does this resonate with you when you are interacting with your grandparents? With an ageing population, are we expecting these figures to rise? These will be the questions we have to constantly ask ourselves.
Percentage of Resident Population having Difficulty in Performing Specific Basic Activities
Will you be curious which estates in Singapore with the highest rates of people not remembering their things? Or which industries hire the most people with disabilities? These will be addressed in our next few posts in our Census series!
