Singapore taps Nobel-winning formula for government dating app

Singapore has launched a dating platform, the latest social-engineering experiment by the city-state’s government to tackle its fast-declining fertility rate.

The initiative, known as FirstDate, opened under a pilot scheme this month for public sector employees aged 21-35 and uses a Nobel Economics Prize-winning matchmaking algorithm. An additional tool suggests date activities and allows users — who receive only one match at a time — to rate their experience in a survey.

The platform is the product of the annual hackathon held by the Singapore government’s technology agency earlier this year.

“FirstDate started with a question among a group of GovTech officers: does having more potential matches necessarily make it easier to find a suitable match?” the website said.

The app, which joins a crowded field of dating apps as well as more bespoke matchmaking services, is Singapore’s latest effort to reverse its falling birth rate, which has made the city-state one of the world’s fastest-ageing countries.

Singapore, with a population of just over 6mn, registered a record-low fertility rate of 0.87 children per woman last year, down from 0.97 in 2024 and nearing South Korea’s world-lowest rate of 0.8. Demographers believe a threshold of 2.1 is needed to maintain a stable population, absent net immigration.

Last month, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong unveiled a package of measures to encourage families to have more children, including offering parents more than $55,000 per child up until the age of 17.

The falling birth rate — along with advances in healthcare that have extended lifespans — has put Singapore on course to become a “super-aged” society this year, defined by the UN as a country in which more than 21 per cent of the population is aged 65 or older. By 2030, one in four Singaporeans is expected to meet that threshold.

FirstDate is not the first time Singapore’s government has attempted to play Cupid with its population. In 1984, it set up the Social Development Unit, a matchmaking agency aimed at encouraging marriage between graduates.

The policy came in response to census findings that marriage rates were declining among women graduates, as men selected partners with lower levels of educational qualification, a trend not replicated among women.

The finding sparked a controversial speech by Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, who advocated for men to choose intellectually superior spouses.

“If you don’t include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society,” he said.

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“So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That’s a problem.”

Asia has emerged as a key area of growth for dating apps as swipe-right fatigue takes hold in markets in North America and Europe, and as stigma around online dating fades in the region, driving more women on to platforms.

Data privacy is another concern in Singapore, whose population is digital native but particularly vulnerable to scams. FirstDate also uses the government’s ID authentication tool — which is linked to a wealth of personal information such as address and marital status — to protect users’ privacy and weed out married users pretending to be single.