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I.

Introduction

One of the major problems that continue to plaque the Philippines is poverty. Despite the said
efforts of both government and business firms many Filipinos remaining need. It is not a simple problem
because now days we are facing mass poverty. For all the magnificent testimonies to man’s superior
skill and intellect in producing today’s level of cultural development, he still has to find the solution to
mass poverty. Whether the government would admit it or not, it is very clear even with our bare eyes that
we our suffering a lot from poverty. But what is poverty anyway?

Let’s first define poverty so we can have a clear understanding with what are we going to discuss.
From a Webster dictionary, poverty means ‘lack of money or material possessions. While from the book
of Villegas entitled ‘Guide to Economics for Filipinos’ he stated that poverty or being poor means
‘experiencing a low quality of life deprived of both the material and non-material requirements that allow
an individual to live like a human being’. According to ‘Addison Wesley Economics’ by Richard M.
Hodgetts’ said most of people regard poverty as ‘a condition in which people are unable to buy the
minimal amount of food, clothing and shelter that is required for existence’. Over all there are a lot of
ways to define poverty, it depends on how the person thinks or how does the person relate it to his life
personal experiences. With all our efforts and patience why did we choose this topic?
Obviously, there are a lot of more economic problems or short comings could be discussed
and infect lot easier, but our group tend to dig the deepest difficulties face by the Filipinos now a day,
we fell with the same root. That is poverty, bottom line we choose this status quo to begin
with our research because it is significant in relation to current issues in society. It is very
obvious in our bare wide eyes and far cry conscience. To start with we tried to do face to face survey,
observation, documentation and research with the best of our skills. We tried to focus our investigation in
the most vital issues.

Let’s look at three concepts of poverty: first relative poverty, second absolute poverty and last
poverty according to the perception of the people themselves. Relative poverty pertains to those whose
income or consumption share is at the bottom 4500 or the population. Absolute poverty measures the
capacity to meet specific minimum needs. This refers to the commonly used phrase “poverty lines”. And
the last type measures poverty according to perceived minimum needs the satisfaction of which would
make a family consider itself as being non-poor. We based our research more on the second and third
concept.

The threshold Family income is the level of incomes that provides at least the minimum
requirements consistent with the dignity of the workers and his family Ashman beings. It is above what
needed for mere survival and should therefore provide enough food, clothing, shelter, education, health
and personal care, security savings for emergencies, savings for unemployment and old age, and
eventually, something a man can call his own, a piece of property.

II. Background of the Study

Poverty and inequality have been recurrent challenges in the Philippines and have again come to
the fore in the wake of the current global financial crisis and rising food, fuel, and commodity prices
experienced in 2008. The proportion of households living below the official poverty line has declined very
slowly and unevenly in the past four decades, and poverty reduction has been much slower than in
neighboring countries such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Indonesia, Thailand, and Viet
Nam. The growth of the economy has been characterized by boom and bust cycles and current
episodes of moderate economic expansion have had limited impact on poverty reduction. Other reasons
for the relatively moderate poverty decline include the high rate of inequality across income brackets,
regions, and sectors; and unmanaged population growth.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the causes of poverty in the Philippines
and give recommendations for accelerating poverty reduction through sustained and more inclusive
growth. The study will provide an overview of the current status of government responses, strategies,
and achievements and will identify and prioritize future needs and interventions. Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) accomplishments to date will also be assessed. It will examine implications of
the current financial crisis on poverty and recommend ways to move forward. The study is based on
analytical work using current literature and the latest available data.

Poverty incidence among households increased from 24.4% in 2003 to 26.9% in 2006 and the
number of poor families increased from 4.0 million in 2003 to 4.7 million in 2006. The headcount index
increased from 30.0% in 2003 to 32.9% in 2006 and the number of poor people increased from 23.8
million in 2003 to 27.6 million in 2006. It should also be noted that poverty incidence and magnitude do
not necessarily coincide. According to the 2006 poverty data, Mindanao has the highest poverty
incidence at 38.8% but Luzon has the highest number of poor families, with almost 2 million families
(42.4% of the total).

Self-rated poverty1 has ranged from 50% to 52% for most of 2008, peaking at 59% (an estimated
10.6 million people) in the second quarter. Inequality has also been persistent over the years. Although
the Gini coefficient2 improved to 0.4580 in 2006 from 0.4605 in 2003 and 0.4872 in 2000, the level of
inequality remains high compared with other countries in Asia and has hardly changed for more than 20
years. High inequality has limited the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction.
The Philippines’ midterm progress report on the MDGs shows that the following gains have been
made: (i) decrease in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty; (ii) visible improvements in
household and population poverty indicators; (iii) maintained net enrollment rates by sex at both
elementary and primary education levels; (iv) reduction in infant deaths per 1,000 live births; (v)
prevalence of HIV/AIDS below the national target of 1% of the population; (vi) improvements in
environmental protection; and (vii) active participation in the World Trade Organization.

However, the Philippines is still lagging behind in meeting the targets on access to primary
education, maternal mortality rates, and access to reproductive health care. Because of the current
global economic crisis and recent increases in poverty incidence, the goal of reducing the proportion of
people living in extreme poverty may not be achieved. In all goals and targets, existing indicators exhibit
significant disparity by region. In terms of gender, the Philippines has made substantial progress in
enhancing the opportunities and welfare of its women and men (ADB et al. 2008); however, challenges
remain in implementing key policies and improving maternal health and reproductive health care.

III. Current Problem of the Study

Philippines Drowning in Poverty

News articles from a range of years had identical the same write-ups about poverty, no changes
at all…it’s still as rampant as of 2001 up to now. And they had similar reasons why it still goes on. Urban
bias in public investment for infrastructure and provision of safety nets; implicit taxation of agricultural
products and an overvalued exchange rate; direct taxation of agricultural exports and imports subsidies;
subsidies for capital intensive technologies; favoring export crops over food crops; breakdown of law and
order; ill-defined property right or unfair enforcement of rights to agricultural land and other natural
resources; high concentration of land ownership; corrupt politicians and rent-seeking government
officials; poor employment throughout the country; unsuccessful rationalizing of the allocating
government assistance; lack of opportunity; lack of security; and lack of empowerment, are among the
thousands of reasons given by the news articles we had researched-including the surveys we
conducted, that causes poverty to our country and to us Filipinos, individually.

Base on the survey that I have read, I learned and known that what our fellow Filipinos assume
as reasons or causes of poverty in the Philippines. Same answers came out such as: because of graft
and corruption, the way or system practice by our government officials, poor governance of the
administration, lack of education, lack of investment, unemployment, underemployment, overpopulation,
no cooperation among Filipinos, idleness and lack of discipline.
On their face to face survey, they asked the Filipinos such question as ‘Why Philippines is
drowning in poverty?’ Based on the result, out of 135 despondences,38% of it believes that corruption is
the reason of poverty. 19% believe that lack of government support, 18% believe it’s because of over
population. While the 16% of it said that it is because of our own fault, considering that we have bountiful
resources yet we don’t know how to use it properly, it is also obvious to each one of us that we lack
discipline, we don’t follow the laws in our homeland and we are contented where we are, we don’t even
tried to strive for a change. 5% of it said it is because of unemployment, so the families suffer from
hunger and lack of basic needs simple because they don’t have enough income. The other 3% stated
that it is because of lack of education and the last 1% claim that it is because of lack of investment.

They followed it up with such question as ‘Are you experiencing lack of financial assistance or
lack material things right now? Same 135 despondences, not surprisingly 107 number of despondences
or 79% of it said ‘YES’ without a blink of an eye. Amazingly 28 number of despondences or 21% of it
answered ‘NO’. It is clear now that higher number of Filipinos is experiencing lack of financial support
and lack of material needs.

As a result, I tried to question the society how did they come up with such answer. I tried to
picture out their everyday way of living, seems like we were watching a film. That was and still their
opinion and perception about poverty. Letups now flip the coin, if there were causes of poverty of course
there were effects of it.

I tried to swim into the deepest effect of poverty to families, to children, to working men and
women, to students, to government employees, to ordinary citizen and to those people who claim the
street as their hell of paradise.

IV. Actions initiated by the Government/Private Organizations

The World Bank

The World Bank plays a large role in working towards eradicating poverty in the Philippines. One of the
projects financed by the World Bank is the ‘Philippine Rural Development Project.’ The goal of the
project is to create greater work opportunities for Filipinos in the rural areas by supporting farmers and
fishermen through improving their access to markets.

As of last year, results from The World Bank reported an increase in household incomes for farmers and
fisherfolk beneficiaries. As of January 2018, this project has been approved for additional financing to
continue its contribution in addressing poverty in the Philippines.
The United States of America

USAID has established the Philippine-American Fund (Phil-Am Fund) as a strategy to tackle poverty in
the Philippines. One of the program’s objectives is to develop solutions to the country’s economic
challenges. The Phil-Am fund financially supports Philippine organizations to support business start-ups.

This strategy to address the poverty crisis promotes entrepreneurship by offering a self-sufficient facility
for citizens who do not have the capacity to take part in the province’s economic activities.

As of last year, the Phil-Am fund has managed to support the establishment of start-up businesses,
provide training in standards for food-related establishments and has integrated more efficient farming
technology in the Philippines.

Australia

Australia’s foreign aid to the Philippines includes ‘The Philippines’ Sustainable Livelihood Program’
(SLP), which helps Filipino families by providing employment assistance. The SLP also helps Filipino
citizens start at enterprise — an approach that encourages self-sufficiency.

Australia’s aid program aligns with the Philippine government’s goal to tackle poverty and promote
development. Sustainable livelihood is the primary goal of this program, and includes micro enterprises,
skills training and pre-employment assistance.

Filipinos who take part in this program have agency and decision-making responsibilities by providing
access to microenterprise development and employment. SLP has become an efficient platform for
productivity and development and since its establishment in 2011, SLP has achieved 97 percent of
targeted program participants.

V. Programs of the Government/Private Organizations

Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program(4Ps)

The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is a human development measure of the national
government that provides conditional cash grants to the poorest of the poor, to improve the health,
nutrition, and the education of children aged 0-18. It is patterned after the conditional cash transfer
(CCT) schemes in Latin American and African countries, which have lifted millions of people around the
world from poverty.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is the lead government agency of the 4Ps.
The 4Ps has dual objectives as the flagship poverty alleviation program of the Aquino administration:

1. social assistance, giving monetary support to extremely poor families to respond to their
immediate needs; and
2. social development, breaking the intergenerational poverty cycle by investing in the health and
education of poor children through programs such as:
- health check-ups for pregnant women and children aged 0 to 5;
- deworming of schoolchildren aged 6 to 14;
- enrollment of children in daycare, elementary, and secondary schools; and
- family development sessions.

The 4Ps also helps the Philippine government fulfill its commitment to the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs)—specifically in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, in achieving universal primary
education, in promoting gender equality, in reducing child mortality, and in improving maternal health
care.

The 4Ps operates in all the 17 regions in the Philippines, covering 79 provinces, 143 cities, and 1,484
municipalities. Beneficiaries are selected through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty
Reduction (NHTS-PR), which identifies who and where the poor are in the country.

Key Programs to Help Reduce Poverty in the Philippines

Most of the Philippines are hit with massive typhoons and still have an armed conflict. These scenarios
are a real struggle to the everyday worker who, even after a long day, still goes back home poor. Due to
these factors, many citizens end up leaving behind farm work and go find work in manufacturing hubs in
the urban areas of the country. These jobs outside the agricultural dome have accounted for two-thirds
of the progress in reducing poverty in the Philippines.

One of the key strategies to help bring down poverty in the Philippines is providing birth control to the
poor. In a radical move for the heavily populated Catholic country, the President made readily available
birth control to nearly 6 million women who cannot afford it.

Providing birth control is a powerful tool for families who now have full control over family planning. The
hope is by giving the women and family units more control, they will have fewer children. This, in turn,
will mean that families can provide more responsibly. This new policy will help the government reach its
goal of reducing poverty by 13 percent by 2022.

The current Filipino population is at 104.9 million and continues to rise at an alarming rate of 1.7 percent
each year. This new law will enable families to control how many children they want. It will also hopefully
take down the population rate to 1.4 percent each year once the law is fully executed.
VI. Conclusions

Poverty in the Philippines is experienced nationwide among the group of urban and rural people,
poverty is never been out of the main problem in our society and on our daily lives. If we are going to
review all of our investigation and data collections it is undeniable that the poor getting poor and there is
no vivid reason why we encounter this. If were just let our eyes wide open with our heart and mind that
are willing to understand we can see the itinerant peddlers and sidewalk vendors who carry their waves
around. It is very rampant and very pathetic, along with their semi-static hawkers in semi fixed locations
who stay along pavements and sidewalk and who clip their waves on the wall and static hawkers in
more or less permanent locations in kiosks around market places, sidewalks and empty lots. Beyond this
circumstance we can also see those children trying to sell cigarettes or wipe our feet when we ride on in
a public transportation, the family that sleep in the street, the victims of poverty that became a master in
street eventually end up dead in their own existence.

But why are we experiencing lack of financial assistance and lack of material or basic needs? For
us it is like a cycle it first started in corruption where in it affects our basic needs in life. It kills our rights
and chances of better living. It pulls us away from our dream. Corruption has a huge impact on the poor
and on poverty reduction. It processes has now been reasonably widely discussed. So, in addition to the
negative impact of corruption, there is also an element of disproportional. A lot of people are now saying
that it’s hard for them to survive a day and they all blame it to the government. At present our
government is facing a lot of anomalies and controversies and because of this the people especially
those who are experiencing poverty right now are saying that Philippines won’t solve its problem as long
as the corrupt officials remain seated on their position.

There are several causes of poverty, some of these are lack of education, corruption, depletion of
natural resources, population growth, lack of job opportunities, lack of government support, lack of
investment, laziness of the citizens and lack of discipline and many other reason and inequality.

The general recession and the contraction in the labor market in the crisis of today world causes
declining labor productivity and rising underemployment, which hurt the poor hard. Poverty can also be
observed in terms of malnutrition, lack of education, low life expectancy, high child mortality and
substandard housing. Poverty is highly correlated with landlessness. Most of the destitute mix many
different ways of earning a living.

The use of the term minimum highlights the limitations of the government definition of poverty.
The government considers only minimum survival standards to measure poverty, thus capturing only
those who are desperately poor and cannot meet even their most basic needs. But those individuals and
families who fail to meet decent living standards should also be considered poor. For example, a family
with one or two minimum wage earners whose income fail to meet their needs are also poor, even if
their income is above government’s poverty line.

In the Philippines, the range of the number of families living in poverty has been widening and the
entire range itself has been increasing. Being poor means experiencing allow quality of life deprived of
both the material and non-material requirement that allow an individual to live like a human being.

VII. Recommendations

For our own sake how can we help our country get out poverty to makes our life a little brighter to
live?

There is a certain process in which poor people remain poor in society. The unfortunate continues
to run in the rat cage of poverty unless a revolution is done to break the cycle. It’s tragic how the wealth
of this world is so unevenly divided and then how people can go on living each day in their own selfish,
abundant riches and take so many things for granted. But despite of that, people who have nothing at all
are still so happy; they continue to just praise the Lord for life itself and continue to pour their hearts out,
give all they have and more for the glory of God. This is the attitude we need to have.

Poverty dehumanizes and hinders self-determination. The crusade against poverty insurgent
because we are dealing with human beings whose dignity is inviolable. The solution to poverty must be
fundamental enough to allow the poor to exercise their freedom to improve their life. The existence of
the informal economy proves the Poor’s enterprise. Poverty can be eliminated by pursuing a strategy
that uses the Poor’s most abundant asset, labor and that ensures an adequate level of basic services
provided by the government.
It is quite surprising how our country Philippines, blessed by bountiful natural resources and
profuse citizen that may contribute for the development of our country, is hardly pushed to poverty.
Philippines is not really poor, it’s just that we don’t know how to use it appropriately and how to cultivate
the gifts blessed upon us. By considering those gifts bestowed upon our country, why not use them as
keys in escaping or somehow subsidizing poverty. There are many factors that if we’ll going to think
about, it will certainly help a lot for attaining zero poverty. One factor is cooperation among all Filipinos,
including the government officials. Why not cooperate and unite to think as one for our country to
progress.

Another key factor needed for surviving poverty is education. The government needs to give prior
to educational status of our country. As the old cliché goes-‘Education is the key to success’. Once a
Filipino is educated, he can contribute lot in attaining improvement for our country.

Children are meant to be nurtured and loved but we see them with a stack of newspapers on one
hand and packs of cigarettes on the other. Article 32 of Rights of a Human Child RA7658 (Prohibition of
Employment of Children) should be more properly implemented in our country. To stop this injustice
dealt out to our children, existing laws should be followed with strict implementation and dedicated
commitment. Let us not allow the future of these children, the future of our country to wither and die
away. Our country, our society, each person can do something. Our help might not end child-labor
today, but it could start, with God’s grace, a healing force which will renew our ailing society tomorrow.

One thing more important factor for subsidizing poverty is the reformation of our country’s
financial infrastructure. By developing our infrastructure and utilities, the government should offer a
multiple job opportunity for the jobless Filipinos and will afford them ample income to fund their basic
needs without enough sayings to both. And if the government can successfully provide opportunities, it
would be more helpful in subsidizing poverty if those they’re going to hire took re-orientation Andre-
education for them to improve their ability and quality as public servants as assurance for their effective
contribution in taking a lift of our country’s situation.

Philippines should need to upgrade its business climate to allure foreign investors in investing in
our homeland. The government should improve political stability, overcome corruption and uplift the level
of governance to make the country attractive to its investors.

The problem of overpopulation must therefore, be addressed urgently. The government should
provide information about birth control methods and about the damaging effects of overpopulation,
especially to those in the lower-class area of society. Family planning might be contrary to the stand of
the Catholic Church, but the Church should be separated from the state. Like the Church, the
government also should make citizens aware of their stand regarding birth control. The public should
have enough information regarding the stands of both sides, and who they decide to follow is already up
to them.

The effects of the economic downturn must be countered by stimulating the economy through
expansionary and, importantly, equity-building policies. This includes:

1. Providing immediate emergency food, income and work relief.


2. Increasing public spending on health care, basic education and housing for the people and
restoring real per capita social services spending to at least 1997 levels.
3. Increasing public spending on labor-intensive and rural infrastructure projects that will directly
improve people's livelihoods.
4. Public resources can be freed by:
- Suspending debt payments. This can begin with, but not be restricted to, debt to foreign
creditors receiving bail-outs from their governments.
- Drastically reducing military spending.
- Cracking down on corruption. This is especially critical to prevent leakages into politicians'
electoral war chests for 2010.

5. Giving priority to Filipino producers in government procurement and aid-funded projects.

6. Implementing a P125 across the board nationwide wage hike and a PhP3,000increase in
government salaries.

7. Removing the VAT on oil products and increasing taxation of wealth, luxury goods and services,
and on unproductive assets and transactions.

8. Reducing interest rates while ensuring that credit remains available.

There is also a need to immediately stabilize capital flows with capital controls, especially against
outflows right now, and supporting the exchange rate. Capital controls must be used to defend against
speculative attacks or financial transactions not related to trade and production.

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