Economic deprivation and family size

Aside from being a handicap to general economic development, overpopulation is particularly harsh on families that are economically deprived.

Filipino families come in various sizes, here called Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large, and Very Large, or XS, S, M, L, and XL for short. Taking into account all the four quarterly SWS surveys of 2011—henceforth to be shortened to “2011”—12.4 percent of households in the Philippines consisted of one or two persons (XS), 37.2 percent had three or four persons (S), 31.2 percent had five or six persons (M), 13.4 percent had seven or eight persons (L), and 5.8 percent had nine or more persons (XL).

The national median number of persons per household is five, i.e. in group M.  A household, strictly speaking, consists of those in a dwelling who share food from a common kitchen; they are easily counted by survey-takers. Most of them are family relations, so it is close to the concept of the nuclear family.

The median ages of household heads, by group, are, in years: XS 55, S 44, M 45, L 47, and XL 48. Aside from group XS, the larger is a household, the older is its head, and, naturally, the more are the children in it. The larger the ratio of children/dependents to adults/earners, the more vulnerable is a household to economic deprivation.

(The exceptionally high median age of XS household heads indicates that many of them are widows, widowers, or retirees, i.e. empty-nesters, rather than young singles or newly married couples. It will be seen that group XS is no less deprived than group S; they have few dependents but are mostly past their peak of earning capacity in the life cycle.)

Families suffering from economic deprivation are generally larger than other families.

Five is also the median number of persons in Filipino families that suffer from poverty, or from food-poverty, or from hunger.

On the other hand, four is the median number of persons in Filipino families that don’t suffer from any of the said deprivations. Together, groups XS and S contain 51.5 percent of the non-poor, 51.4 percent of the non-food-poor, and 51.6 percent of the non-hungry.

Families that are larger have a greater likelihood of suffering from economic deprivation.

In 2011, 49 percent of household heads nationwide considered their families to be mahirap or poor. The percentages that rated their families as poor were 47 in group XS, also 47 in group S, 50 in group M, 51 in group L, and a huge 58 in group XL.

Note no difference between the poverty rates of XS and S. But poverty climbs by 3 points from S to M, by 1 point from M to L, and then by a large 7 points from L to XL. As a result, poverty is 11 points higher in XL than in XS/S.

In 2011, 38 percent of household heads nationwide considered the food consumed by their families to be poor. The percentages that thereby rated their families as “food-poor” were 36 in group XS, also 36 in group S, 39 in group M, 41 in group L, and 47 in group XL.

Note again no difference between XS and S.  Food-poverty climbs by 3 points from S to M, by 2 points from M to L, and by a large 6 points from L to XL. All in all, food-poverty is 11 points higher in XL than in XS/S.

In 2011, 19.9 percent of household heads nationwide said that, at least once during the last three months, their families experienced hunger on account of not having anything to eat. The hunger was “moderate” (only once or a few times) for 16.1 percent, and “severe” (often or always) for 3.8 percent.

The percentages in moderate hunger were 13.6 in group XS, 13.9 in group S, 17.0 in group M, 20.0 in group L, and 22.5 in group XL. Note the difference of only 0.3 point between XS and S. Moderate hunger grew by 3.1 points between S and M, by 3.0 points between M and L, and by 2.5 points between L and XL. In all, there was an 8.9-point difference in moderate hunger in XL over that in XS.

The percentages in severe hunger were 3.3 in group XS, 2.4 in group S, 4.3 in group M, 5.8 in group L, and 5.1 in group XL. This is the one case of deprivation with some inverse link of incidence to household size, i.e. the 0.9 point fall from XS to S, and the 0.7 point fall from L to XL. Nevertheless, with the relatively large 1.9 point rise from S to M, and 1.5 point rise from M to L, the general pattern is still one of deprivation rising in relation to household size.

To the complaisant stance that “with every mouth, God also creates a pair of hands,” the counter-argument continues to be that it takes many years before those hands are able to feed that mouth.

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The figures cited here are from the Social Weather Surveys of March, June, September and December of 2011, pooled together (not merely averaged). Each quarterly survey has a national sample of 1,200 households, and so such pooling gives a statistically superior dataset of 4,800 households for the whole country, with 1,200 households each for the National Capital Region, the Balance of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Limiting the family-size groups to the five groups XS to XL ensures that the sample sizes of deprived or non-deprived households per group, in any area, will be usually in the hundreds, and never less than in a few dozen. In due course, SWS will issue the area-specific figures corresponding to this column.

Computations are by SWS survey archive processing assistant Josefina Mar.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or [email protected].