KEY FINDINGS Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in the Philippines: Past, Present, and Prospects for the Future
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- The Philippines has made significant progress in reducing poverty, but income inequality has only recently begun to fall. Thanks to high growth rates and structural transformation, between 1985 and 2018 poverty fell by two-thirds. However, income inequality did not begin to decline until 2012. It is still high: the top 1 percent of earners together capture 17 percent of national income, with only 14 percent being shared by the bottom 50 percent.
- Several structural factors contribute to the persistence of inequality. The expansion of secondary education and mobility to better-paying jobs, citizen ownership of more assets and access to basic services, and government social assistance have helped reduce inequality since the mid-2000s. However, unequal opportunities, lack of access to tertiary education and a scarcity of skills, coupled with inequality in returns to college education, gendered social norms and childcare, and spatial gaps, sustain inequality.
- Inequality of opportunity limits the potential for upward mobility. While there has been considerable progress in expanding access to basic services such as electricity, safe drinking water, and school enrollment, large disparities limit the development of human capital. Inequality of opportunity and low intergenerational mobility waste human potential, resulting in a lack of innovation and a misallocation of human capital in the economy.
- While schooling is widely accessible, its quality and attainment vary by income group. Children from poorer households are less likely to be enrolled and, if they are, to reach age-appropriate grade levels. That means they are less likely to reach tertiary education, which severely constrains their earning potential and their prospects for upward mobility. With the relatively low share of workers with tertiary education, the premium for college education has remained high. Additionally, tertiary education tends to deliver much higher returns for rich than poor households, possibly due to differences in school quality or f ields of study and employment.
- COVID-19 partly reversed decades-long gains in reducing poverty and inequality. The pandemic halted economic growth momentum in 2020, and unemployment shot up in industries that require inperson work. In 2021, poverty rose to 18.1 percent despite large government assistance. The economy has begun to rebound but signs are emerging that the recovery will be uneven. Prolonged loss of income has taken a heavy toll on the poorest households. With food prices going up and a reliance on adverse coping strategies, among them eating less, there is a risk of serious consequences for the health and nutrition of children in vulnerable households.
- The shock from the COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift in the workforce to less productive sectors and occupations. Employment in wage work has notably decreased and employment in agriculture has risen. These trends have been concentrated among youth and the least educated, which suggests an uneven recovery and widening income inequality.
- The pandemic is likely to result in long-term scarring of human capital development. Over half of households estimate that their children learned from remote learning less than half what they would have learned from face-to-face schooling. The proportion increases to 68 percent in poor households. Extended distance learning is expected to have reduced the learning-adjusted years of schooling by over a full year. Learning loss, combined with the de-skilling associated with prolonged unemployment, could lead to sizable future earnings losses.
- Job polarization could further increase as the nature of work changes. Job polarization among wage workers emerged between 2016 and 2021: employment in middle-skilled occupations went down and employment in both low-skilled and high-skilled occupations went up. This pattern may rise with the transformation of jobs post-COVID-19 and could increase prevailing disparities in incomes.
- Policy can reduce inequality by supporting employment and workers, improving education access and quality, promoting inclusive rural development, strengthening social protection mechanisms, and addressing inequality of opportunity.
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What Has Really Happened to Poverty in the Philippines?: New Measures Evidence and Policy Implications
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Poverty is increasingly recognized as a multidimensional phenomenon, yet its assessment continues to be conducted almost exclusively in terms of income (or expenditure). This practice is prevalent partly because low household incomes are casually associated with other deprivation indicators, such as low levels of literacy and life expectancy.
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Those Who Were Born Poor: A Qualitative Study of Philippine Poverty
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Poverty in the Philippines remains a challenge. In a recent nationwide self-rated survey of the Social Weather Station, more Filipino households consider themselves poor despite the positive feedback on one of the government’s poverty alleviation programs, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4PS). This qualitative study utilized a phenomenological approach to explore the reasons behind this claim. It explored the experiences of poverty from the lower class status, particularly the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries. The study revealed that norms and practices in the family might contribute to their claim of poverty, such as poor lifestyle choices, difficulty prioritizing needs, lack of parenting style, and extended family. Parents’ low education and lack of financial literacy are seen as another factor of poverty. Likewise, religion plays a part in responding to poverty. Participants assert that there is psychological comfort in experiencing poverty because...
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Using the Philippine Family Income and Expenditure Survey, we estimated national and regional Epanechnikov kernel densities to understand how poverty evolved from 2000 to 2015. Results indicated that improvements in Philippine poverty incidence are attributable to various government poverty alleviation programs and to improvements in the ...
Philippine Poverty Studies on Living Standards In addressing our first research objective, we begin with the study of Estudillo (1997), who looked into the factors affecting household income inequality for each population grouping in the Philippines via the Gini coefficient, Theil T, Theil L, and variance of log
Academic critiques of official poverty statistics in the Philippines are also instructive (see Mangahas, 2011 and San Juan and Agustin, 2019; Chossudovsky, 2018). Simply put, the Philippines has ...
In the past three decades, the Philippines has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty. Driven by high growth rates and structural transformation, the poverty rate fell by two-thirds, from 49.2 percent in 1985 to 16.7 percent in 2018. By 2018, the middle class had expanded to nearly 12 million people and the economically secure population had risen to 44 million.
The population and poverty nexus is not new but remains an important development issue for many countries. Recent research has added the crucial dimension of vulnerability to poverty to the debate on the determinants of the welfare status of a population. But the issue of vulnerability has hardly been dealt with using Philippine data.
Abstract. The purpose of this article is to describe the face of poverty in the Philippines. Specifically, through a review of literature, it enumerates the features of destitution in the Philippines, identifies the problems that create, maintain and worsen poverty, and illustrates the coping processes of Filipinos who have made it out of poverty.
Poverty and inequality in the Philippines remains a challenge. In the past 4 decades, the proportion of households living below the official poverty line has declined slowly and unevenly. ... Further research on chronic poverty is needed. The report comprehensively analyzes the causes of poverty and recommends ways to accelerate poverty ...
According to the head count poverty index, poverty incidence declined from 75 per cent in 1961 to 62 per cent in 1971, to 58 per cent in 1985 and to 49 per cent in 1988. The average poverty gap over the whole population was about 40 per cent in 1961, 30 per cent in 1971 and 17 per cent in 1988.
xii Poverty in the Philippines: Income, Assets and Access Income Poverty and Inequality Analysis of income poverty trends in the Philippines must begin with a word of caution as a result of methodology changes over time. Comparisons of poverty data across time cannot be made without first ensuring that the data is based on the same assumptions.
Poverty is increasingly recognized as a multidimensional phenomenon, yet its assessment continues to be conducted almost exclusively in terms of income (or expenditure). This practice is prevalent partly because low household incomes are casually associated with other deprivation indicators, such as low levels of literacy and life expectancy.
A s in other less developed countries (LDCs), urbanization and urban poverty have increasingly become major development policy concerns in the Philippines. The accelerating pace of urbanization is shifting the burden of poverty from rural to urban areas. The proportion of the populatic;m living in urban areas rose from 30 per cent in 1960 to 38 ...
Philippines has a high rate of poverty, with 16% of people in the Philippines living in a state of poverty and as stated by the Asian Development Bank (2018), 16.7% of the population live below ...
This report is intended as an input into the Philippine Government's poverty eradication strategy. The report aims to update our understanding of the nature of poverty and the recent progress in poverty reduction in the Philippines. It examines the extent to which growth in the nineties has translated into poverty reduction and analyzes how well publicly-provided social services reach the poor ...
Impact of Education on Poverty. Angeline M. Pogoy and Imelda C. Montalbo. Cebu Normal University. Date Submitted: June 5, 2012 Originality: 100%. Date Revised: September 9, 2012 Plagiarism ...
This qualitative study investigated the psychological experience of poverty among 2 groups of Filipinos who were interviewed about the effects of being raised poor, 12 who became rich, and 13 who remained poor. Using constructivist and critical theories as research paradigms and grounded theory as methodology, the results of the study illustrated perceived causes, coping mechanisms, and ...
Future research is needed to investigate poverty longitudinally and its determinants in the different facets of the world if global concern in alleviating poverty is to take effect. This research would benefit from varied methods, such as quantitative, qualitative, questionnaire, single-case designs, and interdisciplinary approaches.
Poverty in the Philippines: causes, constraints, and opportunities. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asian Development Bank, 2009. 1. Poverty. ... author is also grateful to Christian Mina and Melinda Romero for research assistance and to Madeline Dizon for overall administrative assistance. viii Poverty in the Philippines: Causes, Constraints ...
government policy and strategies in alleviating poverty. (15 minutes) Assessment Short research paper - Students are to research any one country with high levels of poverty and one country that has successfully reduced poverty, including an analysis of factors that have helped reduce poverty and contributed to the growth.
Abstract. This qualitative study investigated the psychological experience of poverty among 2 groups of Filipinos who were interviewed about the effects of being raised poor, 12 who became rich ...
Based on a poverty line of 250 Rwf per adult equivalent per day (US$ 0.44 at nominal 2006 prices), 56.8% of the rural population are considered poor, of whom 36.8% are extremely poor (i.e. living below the food poverty line of less than 175 Rwf per adult equivalent per day, Government of Rwanda, 2007 ).
As stated by the Center for Business Research and Development, Republic Act 8425 (Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act) identified microfinance as a central strategy for poverty reduction. The Central Bank of the Philippines defines microfinance as the "provision of a broad range of financial services such as deposits, loans, payment
75 minutes. Lesson. objectives. Students will understand concept and issues in poverty. Students will be able to identify and analyze the different faces of. poverty. Students will be able to study and understand the significance of. graphs and statistics in understanding poverty. Program.
A large percentage of the Philippine population has been affected by poverty for many years now (Reyes et al., 2014). As such, the government with an aim to at least minimize pover ty
The Department of Education (Department) proposes priorities, requirements, and definitions for use in the Research and Development Infrastructure (RDI) grant program. The Department may use one or more of these priorities, requirements, and definitions for competitions in fiscal year (FY) 2024 and later years.