Persistent poverty has been perennially bugging the national leadership and society at large even during periods of economic growth appreciably higher than the long-term norm. It is intimately linked to joblessness, which the Social Weather Stations’ latest survey reported last Feb. 11 at 25.2 percent for 2013 (roughly equivalent to the official un- + under-employment at 24.4 percent), creating quite a media stir. Coincidentally, the SWS news appeared on the same day that the National Economic and Development Authority came out with the updated Philippine Development Plan (PDP), on which the Cabinet was reported to have met for eight hours.
The relative innovation in the PDP is the importance given to the spatial dimension of poverty requiring the action plan to group the country’s provinces into three. For example, Category 3 puts the spotlight on particularly vulnerable areas that call for investment in disaster-resilient infrastructure and programs. Not so new, it seems, because it’s been bandied about in public forums, is the effort to revitalize or boost the job-creating sectors such as industry (especially manufacturing), agriculture and tourism, coupled with investments in strategic infrastructure projects, and skills training programs. These are designed for provinces under Categories 1 and 2, with difference in emphasis depending on specific local needs.
The PDP action plan looks plausible and is welcome, indeed. However, it appears lopsided on the demand-for-labor side, i.e., employment creation. Apart from the skills training programs, scant attention is given to the supply-of-labor side due to population growth. Population management policy must be an integral part of the overall strategy to come to grips with persistent poverty and joblessness. An important instrument of such policy is the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act, which has been held in abeyance in the Supreme Court for over a year now. A main thrust of the RH Law is to provide couples with the capacity for informed choice in the number and spacing of their children, thereby enabling them to lead dignified and fulfilling lives. As shown by our progressive Asian neighbors, such a policy precisely, because it benefited mostly the poor, significantly contributed to reducing poverty and joblessness.
Conservative estimates
Official survey data have shown time and again that the poorest women have considerably more children than they want and can afford to support. Consider the following simulation. If by availing themselves of RH services, currently married women of reproductive age (CMWRA) in the poorest quintile (Q1) had achieved their wanted total fertility rate (TFR, i.e., total number of children), the country’s poverty incidence would have gone down significantly from the actual 26.5 percent in 2009 to 24.9 percent, and further down to 23 percent if CMWRAs in both Q1 and Q2 had achieved their wanted TFRs.
These estimates are conservative because, for one, they exclude unmarried women and teenagers whose pregnancy rates have been rising. For another, they are purely demographic effects and do not account for demographic-economic dynamics. For instance, as poor women are unburdened of unwanted pregnancies, they could find work or participate in continuing education and skills training, leading in turn to smaller desired family size. Fewer and better cared for children can then look to a more promising future, and so on.
Note that the government’s recently-revised target is to bring down the poverty rate to 23-25 percent this year and 20-23 percent in 2015 from 25.2 percent in 2012. Depriving women and couples in need of RH services has delayed poverty reduction and prevented our poverty incidence from hitting the Millennium Development Goal of 16.6 percent by 2015 from 33.1 percent in 1991. Significantly, despite some decline in poverty rate, the number of poor Filipinos has shot up from some 20 million in 1990 to about 25 million currently, thus worsening intergenerational poverty.
Come now the results of the 4th Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Survey conducted by the University of the Philippines’ Population Institute, revealing that the number of teenage mothers (15-19 years of age) had ballooned to 13.6 percent (683,000) in 2013 from 6.3 percent (262,000) in 2002. Typically, these teenage girls, mostly from the poorest households, are likely to drop out of school, perhaps become pregnant again subsequently and, hence, face a grim future. Coming on the heels of their poor parents, the cycle of intergenerational poverty is thus perpetuated.
Teenage pregnancies can be prevented by a provision in the RH Law for age-appropriate sexuality education in schools. Parents typically do not discuss sexuality matters with their children, driving the latter to learn haphazardly from peers or the media.
CARP fiasco
Contributing further to intergenerational poverty and joblessness is the largely unappreciated monstrous fiasco that is the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) launched in 1988, according to a recent paper by National Scientist Raul V. Fabella. Its highly vaunted objective was “the enhancement of the beneficiaries’ dignity and quality of life through the pathway of farm productivity.” However, after a generation and 84 percent of the 5.37 million hectares of land earmarked for distribution already achieved in 2012, farm productivity dropped in the agrarian reform communities while more than half of the reform beneficiaries fell below the poverty line compared with over a third poor among farmers in general.
The lessons seem clear. Pursue in earnest job creation coupled with skills training and education, while enabling couples to achieve their desired family size. Keep the youth in school and girls from premature motherhood. And supplant CARP with a more intelligent policy reform for agriculture.
Ernesto M. Pernia (ernestompernia@gmail.com) is professor emeritus of economics, University of the Philippines, and former lead economist, ADB.