In July 2015, a 39-year-old lawyer described a circle of female friends, all about her age and all single, who had spent a decade putting their careers first and telling themselves that love would come if it was meant to. She had joined the OkCupid dating site three years before, after 12 years of being single. She had since dated men in their 30s, 40s and 50s and was still single.
She was one of a growing group. Department of Statistics figures showed 844,100 Singapore residents who had never married in 2004 and 1,048,100 in 2014, a rise of almost 25 per cent in ten years. The number of singles rose in every age group. The sharpest rise was among people in their 50s, from 43,100 to 75,600, or about 75 per cent.
Where the trend came from
In 2015, sociologist Associate Professor Paulin Straughan of the National University of Singapore said that marrying later is common across developed countries. She gave the main cause as “competing life goals”, such as longer years in education and in a career. She also said that older singles tend to know what they want and are less willing to compromise. The median age of first-time grooms in Singapore went from 29.1 in 2003 to 30.2 in 2013. For brides, it went from 26.6 to 28.1.
Most of these singles wanted to marry. In the Marriage and Parenthood Study 2012, commissioned by the National Population and Talent Division, 83 per cent of single respondents said they hoped to marry. Demand for help was growing too. In 2015, the dating agency CompleteMe had a database of about 3,000 people. Its matchmaking service for people over 35 had seen a 40 per cent rise in customers since it started the year before.
Why finding someone was hard
At It’s Just Lunch Asia, 20 per cent of clients were divorced or widowed when the company started in 2004. By 2015, 40 per cent were divorced and 10 per cent widowed. Anisa Hassan, its managing director, said at the time that more divorced people were now coming forward. In the past, she said, people who had been married before might have felt their best years were over.
The lawyer found online dating in Singapore less open than dating abroad. American men who messaged her could easily be found on Facebook and LinkedIn. Some local men would not give their real names or jobs. Others said in their profiles that they were married and looking for “friends”.
Other singles found dating tiring. A 36-year-old training consultant stopped using the Lovestruck app after meeting date after date without finding a connection. He then looked for a wife who shared his Christian faith among people at church. A 40-year-old finance analyst who had never been in a relationship said singles tend to spend time with other singles, so their circles keep shrinking. She had gone to a girls’ school and later studied and worked in places with more women than men. She described dating-agency events as “draining and depressing”.
Expectations were another problem. In 2015, the men interviewed tended to focus on looks and whether a partner could have children, while the women focused on financial stability. The analyst wanted a partner earning about what she did, at least S$9,000 a month. A 44-year-old private investor admitted he was picky about looks, but said women he dated tried to find out whether he owned a car. A 43-year-old widow was turned down in her first phone call with one man because he wanted someone young enough to have children.
Children from earlier marriages also mattered. A 50-year-old tour operator who was raising a young son on his own often brought the boy on simple café dates. He said he was drawn to divorced women who had children of their own. A divorced 50-year-old polytechnic lecturer went to CompleteMe’s speed-dating events for over-35s. He had met his ex-wife at a tea organised by the former Social Development Unit, the government’s matchmaking arm. A 68-year-old woman, twice divorced, said she would date only men she already knew and trusted.
What the numbers show now
A decade on, the Department of Statistics’ General Household Survey 2025, released on 30 June 2026, found that more residents under 40 had never married than in 2020. The biggest increases were among people aged 25 to 34. Among women aged 25 to 29, the share who had never married rose from 69 per cent to 73.4 per cent. Among men aged 30 to 34, it rose from 41.9 per cent to 47.6 per cent.
The survey also linked singlehood to education, in opposite ways for men and women. Among men in their 40s, singlehood was more common among those with lower qualifications. In 2025, 18.9 per cent of men with secondary education or below had never married, compared with 13.8 per cent of university graduates. Among women aged 30 to 49, those with a university degree or higher were more likely never to have married than women with other qualifications.
Across the resident population, the share of people who were married rose from 58.8 per cent in 2020 to 61.8 per cent in 2025. Residents who were single made up 28.6 per cent. Married couples with children were still the most common type of household, at 47.6 per cent of resident households.
Singapore recorded 24,688 marriages in 2025, 6.2 per cent fewer than in 2024. Among ever-married women aged 40 to 49, the average number of children fell from 1.76 in 2020 to 1.67 in 2025.