Singapore plays matchmaker for young civil servants

Singapore asks its young civil servants to trust the state to find them romantic partners.

FirstDate, a government-built dating platform piloted in Singapore, is the latest in a series of state-backed matchmaking initiatives amid Asia’s continued low fertility rates.

It follows Japanese dating app Tokyo Enmusubi and Seoulting, South Korea, programs launched by the governments of Tokyo and Seoul in 2024.

These experiences come amid a growing demographic crisis – official government data puts the total fertility rate at 0.80 children per woman in South Korea, 0.87 in Singapore and 1.14 in Japan – among the lowest in the world and well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Government intervention in such a personal area as romance has sparked skepticism and jokes among social media users, some of whom are calling the initiative “dystopian.”

“Finally, state-designated spouses,” one Reddit user wrote in a discussion on the platform.

But the Asian city-state’s matchmaking service could outperform conventional dating apps on some fronts, experts say.

One potential benefit of state-supported matching is the government’s ability to make verification against official documents a condition of entry into the program. The compromise: Participants must entrust sensitive personal and dating information to the state.

FirstDate requires participants to register using Singpass, Singapore’s national digital identity system, to verify participants’ identity, age and marital status.

Applicants in Seoul must provide proof of Seoul residency, marital status and economic activity. Accepted documents include employment certificates, business registration files or tax returns.

The Tokyo projection goes further. Tokyo Enmusubi applicants must complete an online interview, in addition to photo ID, proof of income and single status.

Commercial dating platforms like Bumble generate revenue through subscriptions and paid features, giving them a financial incentive to attract, convert, and retain paying users.

FirstDate does not advertise subscriptions or paid features, and GovTech says user data will not be monetized.

It also features one match per cycle, giving both participants 72 hours to decide whether to connect or not.

“Dating apps are incentivized to offer people tons and extra choices,” said Dr Norman Li, professor of psychology at Singapore Management University.

Restricting these choices could encourage users to consider each introduction more seriously and reduce “choice paralysis,” he added.

“It’s hard to choose someone when you feel like you have unlimited choices.”

FirstDate uses the Gale-Shapley Stable Marriage algorithm to match participants using their stated preferences.

But the output of the algorithm is only as useful as the preferences fed into it, said Dr Teo Chung Piaw, dean of the National University of Singapore Business School.

FirstDate primarily derives these preferences from questionnaires. In comparison, conventional dating platforms can also learn from user behavior – such as which profiles they view, select or reject – to estimate what economists call “revealed preferences” where users may describe one type of ideal partner, but actually be attracted to different characteristics.

“FirstDate could plausibly produce more compatible matches,” Teo said, but the key question is “whether stated preferences estimated from the questionnaire predict actual interpersonal compatibility better than revealed preference signals generated by conventional dating apps.”

The algorithm is not unique to government matchmaking: Hinge introduced a modified version of its “most compatible” recommendations in 2018.

In terms of dealing with private sector dating apps, Shn Juay, CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel Worldwide, said she doesn’t see it “as competition but rather as part of a shared effort.”

Hinge and Bumble did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

FirstDate is not Singapore’s first foray into state-backed matchmaking. The government established the Social Development Unit in 1984 to encourage marriage among university-educated singles through social events and dating.

Singapore is also exploring other ways to address its demographic challenges, expanding financial assistance and childcare to families in August in a bid to reduce the economic costs of having children, which are seen as one of the main obstacles to family expansion in the city-state.

Although state-supported services generate more connections, matchmaking only addresses part of the fertility decline: an OECD study of fertility trends in Asia and the Pacific highlighted the costs of housing and raising children, financial and labor market insecurity, difficulties reconciling work and family life, and changing social attitudes as major obstacles.

“To completely reverse this trend and permanently solve this problem, I am much more pessimistic,” Li said.

However, early results in Tokyo and Seoul suggest that state-supported twinning can have some success.

As of the end of August, Tokyo Enmusubi had around 17,000 registered members. Tokyo government data showed the service had produced 835 couples entering “serious relationships” and 316 marriages.

Seoulting’s first five matchmaking events attracted 13,854 applications and produced 126 mutually selected pairs. The first publicly known couple to have met through the program is expected to get married in December, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Couples who match the program are offered vouchers for later dates, access to follow-up activities related to festivals around Seoul, as well as an online and offline community where participants can stay connected.

FirstDate is currently limited to Singpass-verified public employees aged 21 to 35, with applications for its current pilot closing on October 5. Wider access has not been announced.

– CNBC’s Jenny Lee contributed to this story.