Singapore turns matchmaker amid rock-bottom birthrate

City-state launches dating platform for government workers, drawing curiosity, amusement and scorn.

A couple spreads a blanket for a picnic on the grassy roof of the Marina Barrage pumping station, against the backdrop of the Singapore skyline, on July 22, 2023 [David Goldman/AP]

Singapore – Nur Aisyah, a 30-year-old civil servant, has spent the past couple of years looking for a partner, with little to show for it.

Nur rarely meets men through work or her hobbies and finds dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble “terrible”, with potential suitors either putting scant effort into their profile or struggling to hold a conversation over text.

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Nur is open to having children but also struggles to imagine raising them in a city where housing and childcare costs are high, and where the burden of childcare typically falls hardest on women.

“I feel slightly pessimistic about the future as a whole,” Nur, who asked to use a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera.

So when Singapore’s technology agency GovTech recently rolled out FirstDate, a dating platform for public servants that uses a Nobel-winning algorithm, Nur signed up out of curiosity

“It’s more of the mindset of ‘Why not?’” she said. “It makes quite a funny story if something did come out of this.”

Born out of GovTech’s annual hackathon, where staff develop and test new ideas, FirstDate is being piloted among single government employees aged 21 to 35.

Participants log in using their national digital ID and answer a survey about their interests, habits and values before being matched with one prospective partner at a time.

Sign-ups for the pilot closed on Monday.

GovTech has told local media that no decision has been made on whether to expand the service beyond employees at government agencies.

A couple celebrates Valentine’s Day as they wear face masks as a precaution against the COVID-19 outbreak at Orchard Road in Singapore on February 14, 2020 [Edgar Su/Reuters]

Singapore’s decision to get into the matchmaking game is its latest attempt to lift a birthrate that has sunk to historic lows.

Fewer than 30,000 babies were born in the Southeast Asian city-state in 2025, bringing the fertility rate to a record low of 0.87.

In August, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced a series of new measures to support families, including almost 70,000 Singapore dollars ($55,000) worth of financial benefits for every child from birth until age 17.

For Singapore, whose six million citizens are practically the city-state’s only resource, the prospect of a shrinking, fast-ageing population is existential.

In February, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong warned that without intervention, the citizen population could begin to shrink by the early 2040s, leaving fewer workers to care for the elderly.

Singapore already leans heavily on immigration to meet its workforce needs, with the government expecting to take in 25,000 to 30,000 new citizens annually over the next five years, a politically sensitive influx in a country whose 6.2 million inhabitants fill an area less than half the size of London.

Yet even as Singapore’s bureaucrats urge people to have babies, many Singaporeans have enthusiastically embraced a child-free lifestyle, preferring to reap the benefits of living in a double-income household with fewer bills or to lavish their attention on pets.

Singapore has never been shy about meddling in matters of the heart.

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew is greeted at a reception in Singapore in 1972 [File: AP]

In a 1983 speech that sparked what became known as the “Great Marriage Debate”, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father and longest-serving prime minister, warned that graduates, especially women, were marrying late and having fewer children than the less educated.

The following year, Lee’s government introduced the controversial Graduate Mothers’ Scheme, which prioritised the children of university-educated mothers in school admissions.

Around the same time, the government established the Social Development Unit (SDU) to organise events where graduate singles could mingle, prompting some Singaporeans to joke that the body’s initials should stand for “Single, Desperate and Ugly”.

Critics called the agency elitist, and a separate body for those with only secondary school qualifications followed in 1985.

“We have a highly interventionist government, even in a private sphere of love and marriage,” Tan Ern Ser, adjunct principal research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.

Tan said that although past governments’ attempts to play matchmaker were neither “significant nor cost effective”, Singapore’s current generation of bureaucrats is no less eager to involve themselves in the dating game, using the power of technology.

Still, Tan said, a government-backed platform does not mark a return to the era of arranged marriages, and “couples who are identified as compatible could still have a love match.”

FirstDate relies on the Gale-Shapley algorithm, devised by mathematicians David Gale and Lloyd Shapley in 1962, which pairs people according to the ranked preferences of each side.

Shapley shared the 2012 Nobel memorial prize in economics for discovering the algorithm, versions of which are used in school admissions and medical residency placements.

A couple sits along the breakwater rocks in Singapore on August 13, 2021 [Roslan Rahman/AFP]

“This is a fundamentally different approach from most dating apps,” Jean Liu, an associate professor of psychology at the Singapore Institute of Technology, told Al Jazeera.

“It is more akin to offline matchmaking, with endless profile swiping replaced by a single match.”

That FirstDate grew out of a hackathon, Liu said, reflects “an appetite to innovate on the nation’s ‘hard problems'”.

Whether it will help people find love any better than mainstream dating apps is another matter.

Questionnaires have limited value in predicting whether two people will hit it off, and the matches are only as good as the pool of people who join, Liu said.

“The process may break down if too few people sign up.”

The app’s greatest value, Liu said, may be in giving the government an opportunity to evaluate and publish dating data, something app companies, which treat their algorithms as sensitive company information, rarely do.

Singapore is not alone in trying to pair up singles.

Tokyo’s metropolitan government launched Tokyo Enmusubi, an AI-powered dating app, in 2024, while the Seoul government’s “Seoulting” programme hosts curated blind dates at landmarks such as the Han River.

Online, Singaporeans’ reactions to their government’s latest bid to play cupid have ranged from scorn to amusement.

Some commentators have dismissed FirstDate as a waste of public money, while others have joked about “state-assigned spouses” and whether finding love will now be included among their work targets.

Jamie, a government employee who works in education, received the email inviting her to join the platform but has no plans to sign up.

“I think it’s quite cringe. It just sounds like someone is trying too hard,” Jamie, who declined to give her last name, told Al Jazeera.

“Our social skills have atrophied. I am so exhausted after work that I just want to go home and lie down,” Jamie said.

She said she does make an effort through community groups, but has yet to meet anyone who shares her values or is emotionally ready for a relationship, so “nothing happens”.

Jamie said she also wonders about privacy.

“What kind of data are they collecting in order for a match, and what are they doing with said data?” she said.

According to FirstDate’s website, profiles are visible only to a person’s match, contact details are shared only when both parties agree, and data will not be monetised or shared with third parties except where the law requires or permits.

A general view shows private and public residential high-rise buildings in Singapore on February 27, 2026 [Roslan Rahman/AFP]

For Teo Kai Xiang, a PhD student and former Straits Times journalist, dating reduced to a list of preferences reflects “a deeply transactional and instrumentalist view of love”, in which partners become “co-owners of a financial venture” and “breeders of sought-after children”.

That mindset, Teo said, is sharpened by Singapore’s public housing system, where the rational move for couples chasing subsidies is to apply for an apartment before marriage.

This algorithm “does not fix or challenge this HR interviewer mindset”, said Teo, who also questions why those aged 36 and above are excluded.

Though he welcomes the experiment, Teo would like to see the government do more to revive the city-state’s third spaces and nightlife instead of “ramming pro-fertility rhetoric down our throats”.

The bigger barrier to dating, he said, is cost – from pricey late-night transport to high rents that keep many singletons living with their parents into their 30s.

Singles cannot buy public housing, home to about 80 percent of residents in Singapore, on their own until they turn 35.

“The truth is that we don’t really know what exactly makes love work, such that we can articulate and implement it on a societal scale,” Teo said. “It’s too messy, too complex, too idiosyncratic, and too human.”

城邦推出面向政府工作人员的约会平台，引发好奇、好笑和嘲讽。

2023年7月22日，一对情侣在滨海堤坝抽水站的草坪屋顶上铺开毯子野餐，背景是新加坡的天际线。[David Goldman/AP]

新加坡——30岁的公务员努尔·艾莎在过去几年里一直在寻找伴侣，但收效甚微。

努尔很少通过工作或爱好结识男性，她觉得 Tinder 和 Bumble 等约会软件“很糟糕”，潜在的追求者要么对自己的个人资料不怎么用心，要么难以通过短信进行交流。

（共四条，此为第一条）热苏斯表示，克里斯蒂亚诺·罗纳尔多如果愿意，可以重返葡萄牙国家队。

列表 2/4 “人人都知道”：加拿大队主教练马尔什希望曼城因违规行为降级

以色列队面临吐口水指控，而爱尔兰队主教练对双方关系破裂感到“欣喜”。

列表 4/4：四位非洲领导人发表联合声明，埃塞俄比亚战争升级

努尔对生孩子持开放态度，但她也很难想象在一个住房和托儿费用高昂的城市里抚养孩子，而且托儿负担通常最重地落在女性身上。

“我对未来整体感到有些悲观，”要求使用化名的努尔告诉半岛电视台。

所以，当新加坡科技局（GovTech）最近推出面向公务员的约会平台FirstDate时，努尔出于好奇注册了该平台。FirstDate采用了一项诺贝尔奖获奖算法。

“这更多的是一种‘为什么不呢？’的心态，”她说。“如果这件事真的出了什么结果，那会是个很有趣的故事。”

FirstDate 源于 GovTech 的年度黑客马拉松，该活动旨在开发和测试新想法。目前，FirstDate 正在 21 至 35 岁的单身政府雇员中进行试点。

参与者使用其国家数字身份登录，并回答有关其兴趣、习惯和价值观的调查，然后一次与一位潜在伴侣进行匹配。

试点项目的报名已于周一截止。

GovTech 已向当地媒体表示，尚未决定是否将该服务扩展到政府机构员工以外的范围。

2020年2月14日，一对情侣在新加坡乌节路庆祝情人节，他们戴着口罩以预防新冠肺炎疫情。[Edgar Su/路透社]

新加坡决定进军婚介行业，是其为提升已跌至历史新低的出生率而采取的最新举措。

2025 年，这个东南亚城邦国家的新生儿数量不足 3 万，生育率降至 0.87 的历史新低。

8 月，总理黄循财宣布了一系列支持家庭的新措施，其中包括为每个从出生到 17 岁的孩子提供价值近 7 万新加坡元（5.5 万美元）的经济福利。

对于新加坡来说，其六百万公民几乎是这个城邦国家唯一的资源，人口萎缩和快速老龄化的前景关乎其生存。

今年2月，韩国副总理颜金勇警告说，如果不采取干预措施，到2040年代初，韩国公民人口可能会开始减少，导致照顾老年人的工人减少。

新加坡已经严重依赖移民来满足其劳动力需求，政府预计在未来五年内每年将接收 25,000 至 30,000 名新公民，这对于一个人口 620 万、面积不到伦敦一半的国家来说，是一个政治敏感的移民涌入问题。

尽管新加坡的官员们敦促人们生育孩子，但许多新加坡人却热情地拥抱了无子女的生活方式，他们更喜欢享受双职工家庭生活带来的好处，减少账单负担，或者把精力放在宠物身上。

新加坡向来不吝于干涉别人的感情生活。

1972年，李光耀总理在新加坡出席招待会。[图片：美联社]

1983 年，新加坡建国之父、任期最长的总理李光耀发表了一场演讲，引发了后来被称为“婚姻大辩论”的争论。他在演讲中警告说，大学毕业生，尤其是女性，结婚年龄越来越晚，生育的孩子也比受教育程度较低的人少。

次年，李光耀政府推出了备受争议的“大学毕业生母亲计划”，该计划优先录取受过大学教育的母亲的子女入学。

大约在同一时期，政府成立了社会发展单位（SDU），组织毕业生单身人士可以交往的活动，这让一些新加坡人开玩笑说，该机构的首字母缩写应该代表“单身、绝望和丑陋”。

批评人士称该机构是精英主义的，因此在 1985 年成立了一个专门针对只有中学学历者的独立机构。

“我们的政府高度干预私人领域，甚至包括恋爱和婚姻，”新加坡政策研究所兼职首席研究员陈恩瑟告诉半岛电视台。

谭表示，尽管过去政府试图牵线搭桥的做法既“意义不大，也不划算”，但新加坡当代的公务员们仍然热衷于利用科技的力量参与到“相亲”游戏中来。

不过，谭表示，政府支持的平台并不意味着回到包办婚姻的时代，“被认定为合适的伴侣仍然可以自由恋爱”。

FirstDate 采用 Gale-Shapley 算法，该算法由数学家 David Gale 和 Lloyd Shapley 于 1962 年提出，根据双方的偏好排名将人配对。

沙普利因发现该算法而与他人共同获得 2012 年诺贝尔经济学奖，该算法的各种版本被用于学校招生和医学住院医师安置。

2021年8月13日，一对情侣坐在新加坡的防波堤岩石上。[Roslan Rahman/AFP]

“这与大多数约会应用程序有着根本不同的方法，”新加坡理工大学心理学副教授刘静告诉半岛电视台。

“这更像是线下相亲，无休止地滑动浏览个人资料被一次性匹配所取代。”

刘表示，FirstDate 源于一次黑客马拉松，这反映了“人们渴望创新，解决国家面临的‘难题’”。

它是否比主流约会软件更能帮助人们找到爱情，则是另一回事了。

刘说，问卷调查在预测两个人是否会合得来方面价值有限，而且匹配结果的好坏也取决于参与匹配的人群的质量。

“如果报名人数太少，这个过程可能会失败。”

刘先生表示，该应用程序最大的价值可能在于让政府有机会评估和发布约会数据，而应用程序公司很少这样做，因为它们将算法视为敏感的公司信息。

新加坡并非唯一一个尝试撮合单身人士的国家。

东京都政府于 2024 年推出了人工智能约会应用 Tokyo Enmusubi，而首尔市政府的“Seoulting”计划则在汉江等地标举办精心策划的相亲活动。

在网上，新加坡人对政府最新牵线搭桥之举的反应不一，从鄙夷到好笑都有。

一些评论员认为 FirstDate 浪费公共资金，而另一些人则开玩笑说“国家指派的配偶”，以及寻找爱情是否会被列入他们的工作目标。

杰米是一名在教育部门工作的政府雇员，她收到了邀请她加入该平台的电子邮件，但她没有注册的计划。

“我觉得这很尴尬。听起来就像有人用力过猛一样，”不愿透露姓氏的杰米告诉半岛电视台。

“我们的社交能力退化了。我下班后筋疲力尽，只想回家躺下休息，”杰米说。

她说她确实通过社区团体做出了努力，但还没有遇到任何与她价值观相同或在情感上准备好谈恋爱的人，所以“什么也没发生”。

杰米说她也对隐私问题感到担忧。

她问道：“他们为了匹配成功收集了哪些数据，以及他们如何使用这些数据？”

根据 FirstDate 网站的说法，个人资料仅对匹配对象可见，联系方式仅在双方同意的情况下才会共享，数据不会被货币化或与第三方共享，除非法律要求或允许。

2026年2月27日，新加坡私人和公共住宅高层建筑全景图。[Roslan Rahman/AFP]

对于博士生兼前《海峡时报》记者张凯祥来说，将约会简化为一系列偏好反映了“一种深刻的交易主义和工具主义的爱情观”，在这种爱情观中，伴侣变成了“金融事业的共同所有者”和“备受追捧的孩子的生育者”。

张先生表示，新加坡的公共住房制度强化了这种心态，在新加坡，想要获得补贴的夫妇的理性做法是在结婚前申请公寓。

Teo表示，该算法“既没有纠正也没有挑战人力资源面试官的这种思维方式”，他还质疑为什么36岁及以上的人会被排除在外。

尽管张先生对这项实验表示欢迎，但他希望政府能采取更多措施来复兴这座城市国家的第三空间和夜生活，而不是“强行灌输支持生育的言论”。

他说，约会的最大障碍是成本——从昂贵的深夜交通费到高昂的房租，导致许多单身人士到了 30 多岁仍然和父母住在一起。

单身人士在 35 岁之前不能独自购买新加坡的公共住房（新加坡约 80% 的居民居住在公共住房中）。

“事实上，我们并不真正了解爱情的运作机制，因此无法将其清晰阐述并在社会层面加以实施，”特奥说。“它太混乱、太复杂、太个性化，也太人性化了。”