Singapore is officially the world’s second‑richest country according to an article by VNExpress. But if you ride the morning MRT, race through a 43‑hour work week, and service a 25‑year mortgage on a 99‑year lease, that headline feels less like a compliment and more like a punchline.​

The rich list that forgot to look down

In 2025, The Economist crowned Switzerland the richest country on earth, with Singapore in second place and Norway third, using GDP per capita in US dollars as the deciding metric. On that indicator, Singapore posts about US$90,700 per head, just shy of Switzerland’s US$100,000 and ahead of Norway’s US$86,800 – an extraordinary figure for a tiny, resource‑poor island.​

But GDP per capita is an average, not a mirror. It simply divides all the income and output generated in the economy by the number of residents, without asking who owns the capital, how much actually reaches households, or how many human hours are burned to produce it. When The Economist adjusts its rich list to look at income per hour worked, Singapore immediately slips down the table, overtaken by countries that generate similar incomes with far less toil.​

On paper, then, Singapore stands on the podium of global prosperity. In practice, the podium is built on a narrow column of high earners, financial flows and foreign capital – and a broad base of ordinary workers holding it up.​

Inequality: second richest for whom?

If GDP per head answers the question “How big is the pie?”, the Gini coefficient answers the more uncomfortable one: “Who gets the slices?” Singapore’s answer is blunt. Before taxes and government transfers, its Gini coefficient in 2023 stood at 0.433 – almost exactly the “close to 0.43” figure critics often cite. After redistribution through subsidies and schemes, it fell to 0.371 in 2023 and 0.364 in 2024, the lowest on record and evidence that the state does lean against inequality.​

Yet even at 0.364, Singapore remains more unequal than many other rich economies that sit comfortably in the low‑0.3 range. Switzerland’s post‑tax inequality is lower; much of continental Europe clusters around more compressed income distributions; Nordic countries pair high incomes with some of the flattest income profiles in the world. The “second‑richest” badge hides the fact that, structurally, Singapore looks less like an egalitarian social democracy and more like a high‑intensity hub city where the top decile pulls away from the rest.​

That gap between national wealth and lived wealth shows up sharply in household income data. Singapore’s GDP per capita hovers around US$90,000, but average annual household income per household member is closer to the low‑US$50,000s. In other words, what residents actually have to spend and save is typically 45% less than half of what the headline number suggests. The rest lives in corporate profits, property values, retained earnings – much of it linked to a globalised economy whose beneficiaries are heavily concentrated among the millionaire and billionaire class.​

Time: the invisible price of prosperity

There is another cost the rich lists rarely count: time. Official labour data shows that employees in Singapore work about 43–44 paid hours per week on average; 2023 numbers put the figure around 43.6 hours, easing only slightly in 2024. Compared to many OECD economies where full‑time work hovers closer to the mid‑30s, that is essentially an extra working day squeezed into each week.​

When The Economist re‑runs its ranking using income per hour worked, Singapore’s shine fades. Countries like Norway and Denmark climb because their citizens generate high output in shorter weeks, while Singapore slides because each dollar of income costs more human time. The island’s model of prosperity is built less on leisurely efficiency and more on disciplined endurance — long commutes, late‑night deadlines, and a culture that normalises permanent overwork as the price of survival.​

The paradox is stark, the same statistic that celebrates Singapore as a productivity miracle refuses to admit that part of that “miracle” is simply people working more hours than their supposed peers in the rich world. You can be ranked the second‑richest country on earth and still feel like you are running on a treadmill that never slows down.​

Housing and cars: ownership without ownership

The story of wealth is not only about income; it is about what people are allowed to own, and for how long. In Singapore, over 80% of residents live in Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats, and roughly three‑quarters of citizens reside in this system of heavily regulated public housing. This is often rightly praised as a housing success – but the fine print matters — most HDB flats are sold on 99‑year leases, on land owned by the state.​

A 99‑year lease can feel functionally like ownership for one generation, especially when resale markets are hot and capital gains look generous on paper. But from a strict asset‑security perspective, the value of that lease declines as it ages, and at expiry the land reverts to the state; the occupant does not hold a perpetual claim the way a freehold homeowner in Switzerland or Australia might. Singapore’s model swaps secure, intergenerational landholding for time‑limited access to state‑controlled housing stock, in a system where land is both a social good and a revenue‑generating asset of a state‑capitalist landlord.​

Mobility tells a similar story. Only about one‑third of Singaporean households own a car; a recent YouGov survey found that just 34% of Singaporeans have at least one car. This is not because Singaporeans do not desire cars, but because the state has deliberately engineered a “car‑lite” city using Certificates of Entitlement, high registration taxes and strict caps on vehicle growth.​

Again, the trade‑off is complex and not purely negative: fewer cars mean less congestion and more efficient public transport, and over 60% of households rely on buses, trains or private‑hire services for daily life. But it also means that, in a supposedly second‑richest country, a basic marker of middle‑class comfort in many societies – owning a modest car – is priced and regulated into a luxury reserved for the top tiers. Citizen's may live in a 'rich nation', but you may not even be able to live like the global middle class.​

Welfare, security, and the definition of “rich”

Stack Singapore against its “competitors” and a pattern emerges. Switzerland, Norway, and the Nordic countries generally combine high incomes with universal or near‑universal access to free or heavily subsidised healthcare, tuition‑free higher education, and expansive public spaces that are not perpetually monetised. Their residents often work fewer hours, live in housing with stronger tenure rights, and rely on welfare systems that buffer shocks far more generously than Singapore’s targeted, means‑tested schemes.​

Singapore, by contrast, has kept taxes relatively low and social spending tightly calibrated, emphasising individual responsibility and family support over broad unconditional entitlements. Health and education are subsidised, but not universally free; pensions are mediated through compulsory savings; and safety nets are designed to be last resorts rather than expected pillars of middle‑class life. The result is a society where many people are one retrenchment, illness or caregiving crisis away from acute financial strain, even while aggregate GDP cruises near the top of global tables.​

This gap between macro‑wealth and micro‑security is the quiet tension beneath the “second‑richest” boast. A country can rank among the richest on earth and still leave large segments of its own people feeling precarious, stretched and excluded from the full promise of that wealth.​

Reading the fine print of “richest”

So, is Singapore really the world’s second‑richest country? On one narrow metric – GDP per capita in nominal US dollars – yes. On almost any measure that centres ordinary lives instead of averages, the answer becomes murkier: high inequality even after redistribution, long work hours, leasehold housing, constrained car ownership, and a welfare model that offers discipline before comfort.​

The more honest question is not “Is Singapore rich?” but “Rich for whom, and for how long?” A ranking built on output per head cannot answer that. It does not see the commuter pressed against MRT doors, the young family watching their flat’s lease tick down, or the worker calculating whether one more degree, one more side hustle, one more late night might finally be enough to feel safe.​

Until the yardsticks change – from income to security, from wealth produced to lives sustained – Singapore will continue to win the numbers game while losing the story that matters most, whether its people genuinely live as richly as their country is said to be.