Poverty: The good, bad and ugly news

By some accounts, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and its mother agency the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) ruffled feathers in the Palace and the Cabinet with the way they announced the first semester 2012 poverty figures last week. Some even speculated that it may have cost Neda Secretary Arsi Balisacan his slot in the President’s delegation to the Asean meeting in Brunei, having dropped out of the list at the last minute.

I can see why NSCB Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert and Secretary Balisacan, disciplined academic professionals as they have been in their former nongovernment personas, would choose to report the news the way they did, and when they did. They can be expected to report the facts as they are, good news or bad. They must also adhere to a previously announced schedule for release of “designated statistics” that include the quarterly reports on gross domestic product (GDP) growth and other key statistics. Postponing the release of not-so-flattering news until after the elections would have been an obvious temptation for the government’s political strategists. But NSCB and Neda would betray their constitutionally provided independence—not to mention raise suspicions at the expense of their credibility—if they were to deviate from their committed release schedule for data as important as these.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s the journalist in me, but NSCB didn’t really have to headline its report by outright saying that Philippine poverty incidence had “remained unchanged.” It could just as easily (and no less truthfully) have headlined that the poverty rate appears to have gone down, from the 2009 level of 28.6 to 27.9 percent of the population, or from 22.9 to 22.3 percent of families. It could then qualify that the difference was not statistically significant (I have seen NSCB do this before). Notice how when GDP growth rises or falls by a few decimal points, no one pays attention to whether the difference is statistically significant or not; GDP growth goes up or down, period. Indeed, choice of words can make a great deal of difference. And at the height of political season such as now, the administration’s political strategists would understandably wish that NSCB and Neda had taken some lessons on “wordsmithing” and been more politically savvy in their reports, without necessarily forsaking the truth. Media professionals call it “spin.”

There is, after all, good news in the poverty figures along with the bad (and ugly). It is welcome news, for example, that poverty incidence actually went down in the majority of our regions (9 out of 16) and provinces (50 out of 81). The best performing regions were Cagayan Valley (Region II) and Zamboanga Peninsula (Region IX), both of whose poverty rates (as a percent of families) fell by more than 11 percent. Poverty dropped from 22.3 to 19.8 percent of families in Cagayan Valley, and from 41.5 to 36.9 percent in the Zamboanga Peninsula. Other top performing regions were the Ilocos Region (18.5 to 16.7 percent, or a 9.7 percent drop), Central Visayas (31.6 to 28.8 percent, or a 9 percent drop), Western Visayas (26.7 to 24.7 percent, a 7.5 percent drop), Mimaropa (30.6 to 28.4 percent, a 7.2 percent drop), and Bicol Region (36.5 to 34.1 percent, a 6.6 percent drop).

Tawi-Tawi was the best performer among the provinces, with poverty rate dropping from nearly half (48.3 percent) of families in 2009 to only one-fifth (20.8 percent) by 2012, a steep 57 percent fall. Following closely are Aklan (from 38.4 to 21 percent, dropping by 45.3 percent), Biliran (34.6 to 20.7 percent, a 40.2 percent drop), and Benguet (whose already low poverty incidence of 7 percent was further cut to 4.3 percent, a 39 percent improvement). Other top performing provinces were Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Sur, Ilocos Norte, Camarines Norte and Zamboanga del Norte. Interestingly, the last used to be the nation’s poorest province, with 63.6 percent of its families poor in 2009. Now it is only the fifth poorest, dislodged by Lanao del Sur, Apayao, Eastern Samar and Maguindanao, in that order—all of whose poverty rates shot up in the three-year period by 27 to 54 percent.

The ugly news was the drastic rise in poverty in 19 provinces where poverty incidence jumped by more than 25 percent within just a three-year period. The island province of Camiguin—proximity to dynamic Cagayan de Oro notwithstanding—fared worst, with poverty rate more than doubling from 17.2 to 34.9 percent. Second worst was Zambales, with poverty rate nearly doubling from 9.4 to 18 percent. North Cotabato’s poverty rate jumped 80 percent, from 24.4 to 43.9 percent. Also seeing a dramatic rise in poverty rates are Ifugao, Maguindanao, Aurora, Quirino, Batanes, Nueva Vizcaya and Guimaras, all jumping by more than 40 percent. From the list, one might venture reasonable guesses on why these provinces saw such a dramatic poverty rise, including political turmoil and geographic isolation, especially in the case of island provinces.

The recent reported poverty trends are sobering, but not surprising. Even with huge amounts (P39.4 billion) given out as targeted conditional cash transfers (CCT) to poor families in 2012, NSCB calculates that more than twice that amount would have been needed to close the poverty gap. Also, and as widely lamented, recent improvements in the economy have not permeated down to the Filipino poor. We all have our favorite theories and solutions, but what is clear is that trickle-down economics and business as usual simply won’t bring our poverty numbers down to where we all need them to go.

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