Singapore acts as a matchmaker for young government officials

Singapore is asking young civil servants to trust the country and find lovers.

FirstDate, a government-built dating platform being piloted in Singapore, is the latest in a number of government-backed matchmaking initiatives, driven by Asia’s persistently low birth rates.

This follows Japan’s AI-powered dating app Tokyo Enmusubi and South Korea’s Soulting, a program launched by the Tokyo and Seoul governments in 2024.

The experiment took place amid a growing population crisis. According to official government data, the total fertility rate is 0.80 children per woman in South Korea, 0.87 in Singapore, and 1.14 in Japan, which is the lowest in the world and far below the replacement level of 2.1.

Government intervention in an area as personal as love has sparked skepticism and jokes among social media users, with some describing the initiative as “dystopian.”

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

But experts say the Asian city-state’s matchmaking service could outperform traditional dating apps in certain ways.

One potential benefit of state-sponsored matchmaking is that governments can make matching against official records a condition of participation in the program. In exchange, 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 their identity, age and legal marital status.

Applicants for Seoul stay must provide proof of Seoul residence, marital status, and economic activity. Acceptable documents include proof of employment, business registration records, or income statements.

Screenings in Tokyo are progressing further. Tokyo Enmusubi applicants must complete an online interview in addition to photo identification, proof of income, and single status.

Commercial dating platforms such as Bumble generate revenue through subscriptions and paid features, providing financial benefits for attracting, converting, and retaining paying users.

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

Also, one match is shown per cycle, and both participants have 72 hours to decide whether to connect or not.

“Dating apps are being encouraged to offer people more options,” said Dr Norman Lee, a professor of psychology at the Singapore Management University.

Limiting these options could encourage users to think more seriously about each deployment, reducing “choice paralysis,” he added.

“It’s hard to decide on someone when you feel like you have endless options.”

FirstDate uses the Gail Shapley Stable Marriage Algorithm to pair participants based on their specified preferences.

But the output of an algorithm is only as useful as the settings input into it, said Dr Teo Chun Piaw, dean of the National University of Singapore’s Business School.

FirstDate derives these preferences primarily from surveys. By comparison, traditional dating platforms can also learn from user behavior (such as which profiles to view, select, or reject) to infer what economists call “revealed preferences.” This means that while users may be describing their ideal partner type, they are actually attracted to different characteristics.

“FirstDate is likely to produce more compatible matches,” Teo said, but the key question is “whether expressed preferences inferred from surveys are a better predictor of actual interpersonal compatibility than the revealed preference signals generated by traditional dating apps.”

This algorithm is not specific to government matchmaking. Hinge introduced a revised version of its “Most Compatible” recommendations in 2018.

As for its relationship with private dating apps, Coffee Meets Bagel Worldwide CEO Xin Juai said it “doesn’t see it as competition rather than part of a common effort.”

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

FirstDate is not Singapore’s first foray into state-sponsored matchmaking. The government established the Department of Social Development in 1984 to promote marriage among single university graduates through social events and meet-ups.

Singapore is also considering other ways to address its demographic challenges, expanding financial and childcare support for families in August to reduce the financial cost of having children, considered one of the city-state’s main impediments to family expansion.

Even if state-sponsored services create more relationships, matchmaking only addresses part of the decline in birth rates. An OECD study of fertility trends across the Asia-Pacific region identified the cost of housing and childcare, financial and labor market insecurity, difficulties in balancing work and family life, and changing social attitudes as key obstacles.

“I’m more pessimistic about completely reversing this trend and permanently solving this problem,” Lee said.

Nevertheless, early results in Tokyo and Seoul suggest that state-sponsored matching may have some success.

The number of registered members of Tokyo Enmusubi is approximately 17,000 as of the end of August. According to data from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the service has led to 835 couples entering “serious relationships” and 316 marriages.

Soultin’s first five matching events received 13,854 applications, resulting in 126 mutually selected pairs. The first couple publicly known to have met through the program is scheduled to marry in December, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Couples matched through the program will receive vouchers for future dates, access to follow-up activities related to festivals across Seoul, and online and offline communities where participants can stay connected.

FirstDate is currently limited to Singpass-verified civil servants between the ages of 21 and 35, and applications for the current pilot close on October 5th. Broader access has not been announced.

– CNBC’s Jenny Lee contributed to this article.