I remember when I was younger I went to a friend’s house for a Christmas party.
It took me a while to get there and had to wind my way through several alleyways filled with glamorous residences that looked like they came straight from the Crazy Rich Asians set.
Most of us have preconceived notions about people staying in certain areas of Singapore.
For example, if someone mentions staying near that MRT station on the Downtown Line, my mind automatically puts them in the high income category.
As someone who has lived in a normal neighborhood all my life, I have never been curious about the wealth of my neighbors.
Until I came across this dataset which was presented in the 2020 census.
This report contains interesting statistics that break down the monthly household income of residents by district.
As if we didn’t have enough competition in our lives, we can now compare our monthly salaries with those of our neighbors (hooray!).
And let’s take a quick look at this distribution and either look forward to our newly acquired knowledge or weep.
TL; DR: This is your household income in your area of residence
Household income is the sum of the gross income of all members of a household.
We have already seen the median household income, which is $ 7,744 in 2020.
Based on the above distribution:
- Tanglin has the highest proportion of resident households with monthly household incomes of $ 20,000 or more (50.1 percent)
- Closely followed by River Valley (46.8 percent) and Bukit Timah (45.4 percent)
- Outram has the highest proportion of resident households with monthly household incomes below $ 5,000 (56.9 percent), largely due to the high number of unemployed households (27.2 percent).
- Next up are Bukit Merah and Kallang (47.2 percent), followed by Ang Mo Kio (46.8 percent).
Monthly household income by place of residence
The districts are divided according to the URA master plan.
Let’s take a closer look at the different planning areas and their monthly household income distribution.
Please note that the monthly household income from employment also differs from the number of members in a household.
For comparison, the median household income in Singapore is $ 7,744 while the median household income per household member is $ 2,463.
Zooming out a little, monthly household income varies across Singapore.
Median monthly household income by place of residence
If you’re wondering what the “average” monthly income of your district’s residents is …
Here we look at the median (i.e. 50 percent) across all planning areas.
Note: The term “average” is used loosely here, it usually refers to the mean, but we will look at the median because of the skewed distribution across certain income groups.
Using the graphs above, here are the median incomes in different residential areas:
| place of residence | Median monthly household income |
|---|---|
| Ang Mo Kio | $ 5,000 to $ 5,999 |
| Bedok | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| This month | $ 9,000 to $ 9,999 |
| Bukit Batok | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| red hill | $ 5,000 to $ 5,999 |
| Bukit Panjang | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| Bukit Timah | $ 15,000 to $ 17,499 |
| Choa Chu Kang | $ 8,000 to $ 8,999 |
| Clementi | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| Downtown core | $ 15,000 to $ 17,499 |
| Geylang | $ 5,000 to $ 5,999 |
| Hougang | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| Jurong East | $ 6,000 to $ 6,999 |
| Jurong West | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| Kallang | $ 5,000 to $ 5,999 |
| Naval parade | $ 8,000 to $ 8,999 |
| Ninth | $ 9,000 to $ 9,999 |
| Outram | $ 3,000 to $ 3,999 |
| Pasir Ris | $ 10,000 to $ 10,999 |
| Punggol | $ 9,000 to $ 9,999 |
| Queenstown | $ 6,000 to $ 6,999 |
| River valley | $ 17,500 to $ 19,999 |
| Sembawang | $ 8,000 to $ 8,999 |
| Line | $ 9,000 to $ 9,999 |
| Serangun | $ 9,000 to $ 9,999 |
| Tampins | $ 8,000 to $ 8,999 |
| Tanglin | $ 20,000 and more |
| Toa Payoh | $ 5,000 to $ 5,999 |
| Wooded areas | $ 7,000 to $ 7,999 |
| Yishun | $ 6,000 to $ 6,999 |
| Other | $ 10,000 to $ 10,999 |
What does it mean to you?
A household income that is below the median does not necessarily mean that you are poor.
On the other hand, a high household income does not necessarily make you rich.
What you do with this money determines your wealth.
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In one of my favorite books, The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, the author mentioned the following:
“Wealth is created by suppressing what you could buy today in order to have more things or more options in the future. No matter how much you make, you will never build wealth if you can’t limit how much fun you can have with your money today. “
That being said, one of the fastest ways to grow your wealth is by increasing your earning power.
One of the ways to do this is to focus on upskilling to stay relevant and employable.
In this way we gain transferable skills and make our employability future-proof.
Only with an increased paycheck could we further accelerate our savings rate.
This article was first published in Seedly.
