Ever since the paper was published in 2019, I was excited to speak with its authors about how they used quasi-experimentation to study the relationship between debt relief among low-income individuals and their psychological functioning and economic decision-making. In other words, what is the effect of debt reduction in low-income Singaporean households? With lead author Dr. Ong Qiyan, we also learn more about the concepts of scarcity and the bandwidth tax and their implications for the design of social policies and social services.

Dr. Ong is an adjunct senior research fellow at the Social Service Research Centre, in the National University of Singapore. She was previously on this podcast with Prof. Walter Theseira.

My conversation with Dr. Ong is part of our 2021 focus on researchers in Singapore (https://socialservice.sg/podcast/). The feature photo is by Ng Shi Wen.