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FROM RESEARCH TO GOVERNANCE: INSIGHTS FROM SINGAPORE’S POLICY LANDSCAPE Featured Faculty: Tan Poh Lin Assistant Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
2020 has been a year of disruptions. From the antivaccination movement, to the US-China rivalry, and most importantly the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world face countless challenges, and Singapore is no exception.
Joelle Fong Assistant Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
Reuben Ng Assistant Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
It is then up to governments to come up with and implement policies that can alleviate the pressures of these disruptions on society. But where do policy researchers stand in this process? In the first of four webinars marking the 16th anniversary of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), four young faculty members, including session moderator Assistant Professor Tan Poh Lin, came together to discuss their findings from each of their research projects, and share their takeaways in the context of the public policy making process. Poverty and public policy
Ng Kok Hoe Senior Research Fellow, Head of Case Study Unit, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
Dr. Ng Kok Hoe, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Case Study Unit at LKYSPP, started off the
session with an overview of his two projects, both related to poverty in Singapore. His first project, What older people need in Singapore: A household budgets study, sought to determine the minimum amount that elderly households in Singapore needed for a basic standard of living. Beyond that, however, the project was motivated by a lack of standards and benchmarks for assessing people’s situations, Dr. Ng explained. The aim of his second study, Homeless in Singapore: Results from a Nationwide Street Count, was to find out the size of the homeless population in Singapore, as well as the scale and nature of homelessness “before we can tackle it in terms of policy solutions”.
