The effect of non-contributory pensions on labour supply and private income transfers: evidence from Singapore

Table 1 Summary statistics for baseline demographics—comparison between those who received and did not receive SSS payout, among individuals aged 65 and above in 2016

	Untrimmed sample				Trimmed sample (propensity score 0.2–0.8)
	Mean		Norm diff²	Diff in means³	Mean		Norm diff²	Diff in means³
	SS (N¹ = 429)	No SS (N¹ = 1246)	Norm diff²	Diff in means³	SS (N¹ = 326)	No SS (N¹ = 564)	Norm diff²	Diff in means³
Age at 2016	68.86	68.03	0.28	0.83***	68.99	68.67	0.10	0.32
Married	0.69	0.77	−0.18	−0.08***	0.67	0.72	−0.12	− 0.05*
Male	0.40	0.54	−0.30	−0.15***	0.34	0.39	−0.11	−0.05
Chinese	0.87	0.87	0.01	0.00	0.88	0.90	−0.05	−0.02
Malay	0.07	0.07	0.00	0.00	0.06	0.06	0.02	0.01
Indian	0.05	0.05	0.01	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.03	0.01
No formal schooling	0.17	0.12	0.13	0.05**	0.17	0.15	0.06	0.02
Primary schooling	0.35	0.26	0.20	0.09***	0.40	0.37	0.06	0.03
Secondary schooling	0.36	0.41	−0.11	−0.05*	0.36	0.36	0.00	0.00
Lives in 1-room flat	0.05	0.01	0.22	0.04***	0.05	0.02	0.14	0.03*
Lives in 2-room flat	0.05	0.02	0.15	0.03**	0.05	0.03	0.06	0.01
Lives in 3-room flat	0.33	0.21	0.27	0.12***	0.39	0.33	0.11	0.05
Lives in 4-room flat	0.36	0.37	−0.03	−0.01	0.36	0.40	−0.09	− 0.04
Lives in 5-room flat	0.16	0.29	−0.32	−0.13***	0.12	0.15	−0.11	−0.04
Owns home	0.83	0.88	−0.15	−0.05**	0.82	0.84	−0.04	−0.01
No. of hh members	2.95	3.28	−0.22	−0.33***	2.83	3.02	−0.13	−0.19*
No. of total children	2.18	2.15	0.02	0.03	2.14	2.21	−0.05	−0.07
Retirement preparedness⁴	2.17	2.33	−0.18	−0.16***	2.12	2.15	−0.04	−0.03

Notes:
¹N refers to number of respondents
²Normalised differences are computed as in Imbens (2015) (as the difference in means standardised by the square root of the mean variance of both groups)
³***, **, * represent statistical significance at the 10, 5, and 1% levels respectively, based on a t-test
⁴This is a self-assessment on preparedness for retirement, captured on a scale of 1 to 5, with a higher value representing greater preparedness. This was captured during the baseline survey, which was conducted before the announcement of details on the Silver Support Scheme