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https://theaseanpost.com/article/income-inequality-singapore

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a) Income Inequality
b) Income plays an important role in determining your social class in Singapore, even within the student community in Singapore, a pecking order is silently established, with a range of variables determining your place in the social hierarchy;
the most common being your school and whether the public deems it to be 'elite' or not  Income comes into play even while trying to pursue an education, this is evident when assignments are set online or when comparing the grades of students with tuition lessons to those of students without.

More materialistic aspects affected by income, such as the brand of your schoolbag or laptop are also large components of the social caste you belong in, this is seen from the article stating,

“The pressure to keep up is immense. You need to show that you’ve made it: Armani, Gucci, Prada, whatever it takes, you have to buy it and put it somewhere people can see. Even though my family is well off, I still found it overwhelming,” says an investment banker who recently relocated from the island republic to Malaysia.

c) This is related to social studies because income inequality heavily taints the meritocratic social fabric that multiple generations of Singaporeans have strived to establish and causes social stratifaction.

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Singapore has a relatively low Gini Coefficient of 0.417 (before taxes and transfers) which has moderated over the past 5 years with the lower income group seeing their real per capita household income grow by close to 20% over the past 5 years, where the Gini Coefficient refers to statistical measure of distribution which is used as a gauge of economic inequality, measuring income distribution among a population.
Sources:
1) Juhi. 2019. “Gini Coefficient and Lorenz Curve Explained.” Medium. Towards Data Science. March 6, 2019. https://towardsdatascience.com/gini-coefficient-and-lorenz-curve-f19bb8f46d66.

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The income gap between the highest 10% and lowest 10% income earners increased from $8236 to $12661 (54%) from 2007 to 2017, showing the rapidly growing problem in Singapore. Income inequality affects people of lower income quintiles through the resulting class, economic, and social divides.
Sources:
1)Cth, Parliamentary Debates, Singapore Parliament, vol. 84, 27 August 2008, https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/topic?reportid=016_20080827_S0003_T0003.
2)Hofmann, William. 2018. “How Big of a Problem Is Income Inequality in Singapore?” ValueChampion Singapore. ValueChampion Singapore. July 25, 2018. https://www.valuechampion.sg/2018/07/how-bigproblem-income-inequality-singapore.

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The issue of income inequality unsolved would result in many problems: social, economic and political. As quoted from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, “If we fail - if widening income inequalities result in a rigid and stratified social system, with each class ignoring the others or pursuing its interests at the expense of others - our politics will turn vicious, our society will fracture and our nation will wither.” The American Journal of Public Health mentions that income inequality is related particularly closely to deaths from homicide and accidents (unintentional injuries), and that alcohol-related causes often point toward pathways mediated by failing social cohesion.
Sources:
1) “CMIO Model Still Relevant as S'poreans 'Value Importance of Race': Study.” 2017. TODAYonline. November 8, 2017. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/cmio-model-still-relevant-sporeans-value-importancerace-study.
2) 2019. “8. Public Policy Trade-Offs.” Dynamic Economics, n.d. Accessed January 8, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674188679.c8.

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Taking into consideration that those residing in Singapore are highly diverse in nature, unity is extremely important in the face of trouble, and a lack of which would make Singapore more vulnerable to, and less resistant to incidents like terror attacks. Social stratification could also very easily lead to discrimination and tension between different socioeconomic classes. Income inequality results in price distortion, due to a distortion in supply and demand. In Singapore, this manifests in a few ways. Firstly, bluecollared and lowly skilled-workers are paid lowly, facing competition with those from other countries such as, but not limited to India, which are sources of labour cheaper than locals. Since the mid-1970s, Singapore has become increasingly dependent on foreign labour to fuel its high growth and competitive position. In the 1990s, foreign workers were welcomed with even greater gusto to address low fertility rates, as well as to aid Singapore’s transition into a knowledge-based economy. Between 1990 and 2005, the number of foreign workers in Singapore tripled to form nearly 30% of the workforce. Hence, with the increased supply of lowly-skilled workers and an unchanged supply, the wages of lowly skilled workers are artificially depressed as menial labourers, the value of menial labour decreasing as the supply of labourers available increases. On the other hand, those in white-collared jobs continuously earn more. This is because they obtain their jobs through more stringent hiring processes, and carries specific valued skills.
Sources:
1) Parietti, Melissa. 2019. “Blue Collar vs. White Collar: What's the Difference?” Investopedia. Investopedia, May 7, 2019. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/wealth-management/120215/blue-collar-vswhite-collar-different-social-classes.asp.

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PROGRESSIVE WAGE MODEL

The Progressive Wage Model, developed by tripartite committees consisting of unions, employers and the government, currently helps to uplift low-wage workers of Singaporean citizenship or permanent residence in 3 sectors—cleaning and security sectors, as well as landscape companies on NParks’ Landscape Company Register. Lift technicians will be the fourth group of people to benefit from the PWM, which will officially come into effect for them in 2021. An extension of minimum wage policies, the PWM serves to help Singaporean workers to climb 4 ladders of skill upgrading, namely productivity improvement, career advancement and skills upgrading, apart from just wage progression, which minimum wage models only focus on. Additionally, the PWM ensures employer commitment to employee career growth and increased productivity. The stakeholders of the PWM are the government and employers of employees in cleaning, security and landscape industries, while the employees in the said industries are the main beneficiaries. For the cleaning, security and landscape industry, the progressive wage structure comprises a number of ladders for  broad categories of jobs which account for the most common types of jobs in the industry. Below is Figure 1.1, an example of how the progressive wage structure works to benefit workers in the cleaning industry, where the progressive wage structure depicted comprises 3 wage ladders for 3 broad categories of cleaning jobs. They account for the most common types of cleaning jobs based off NEA’s classification of cleaning subsectors under the Enhanced Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme.

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Sources:
1) “What is the progressive Wage Model?.” n.d. Ministry of Manpower Singapore. Accessed January 8, 2020.
https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/progressive-wage-model/what-is-pwm.
2) “Progressive Wage Model in the Landscape Sector.” n.d. Ministry of Manpower Singapore. Accessed January 9, 2020. https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/progressive-wage-model/landscapesector.