write an essay about poverty in the philippines

Community Developments

The outreach blog : from the field, the state of poverty in the philippines: what are the causes.

The Philippines and its roughly 117,000,000 people have struggled with income inequality for generations. Even as infrastructure and opportunity has improved in highly populated areas in recent decades, poverty in the Philippines, particularly for people living in remote areas, remains a serious issue.

In this blog post, you’ll learn about the complex issue of chronic poverty in the Philippines, its causes, and its impact on families. Additionally, you’ll see how Outreach International is working to alleviate poverty in this Southeast Asian nation.

Decoding Poverty: A Deep Dive into the Statistics

According to the World Bank , between 1985 and 2018, the poverty rate in the Philippines declined by two-thirds, thanks to economic growth initiatives and investment in infrastructure, including education. However, the improvements were largely focused in the most populated areas, where the most opportunities already existed. According to the Asian Development Bank , the top one percent of earners have benefitted the most, capturing 17 percent of the national income, while only 14 percent of national income is obtained by the lowest-earning 50 percent of the population.

The Philippines’ income inequality stems from several structural factors. Higher education and job skills development remain out of reach for many. Unequal access to college, and social norms that leave women at a disadvantage, also contribute to persistent inequality. And the geography of this archipelago nation makes the issue even more difficult to solve, as opportunities and natural resources are unevenly distributed.

Understanding the Impact of Family Poverty

Family poverty is not just about financial struggle. It affects every aspect of a household’s well-being. Children who live in poverty are less likely to enroll in school and reach age-appropriate grade levels because their time is needed to help the family strive to meet their basic daily subsistence needs. This stifles their access to higher education and the future opportunities it would bring, limiting earning potential, the potential economic growth of families, and the possibility of community development.

Managing Resources: Addressing Poverty in High Population Areas

Population density has a significant impact on poverty in the Philippines. High-population areas often struggle to manage limited natural and government resources, which negatively impacts quality of life. And a lack of job opportunities in densely populated areas contributes to poverty rates. These challenges trickle into remote areas, making it even more difficult for rural communities and marginalized people to break their own unending cycle of poverty .

Living Conditions and Resource Challenges

Living conditions in densely populated areas of the Philippines are affected by resource scarcity and inadequate government support systems. Access to basic necessities like electricity, safe drinking water, and quality education remains uneven. This scarcity not only limits the potential for development across the nation but also perpetuates inequality. As a result, impoverished communities face daily struggles, making it all the more challenging to break free from the cycle of poverty.

The Pandemic’s Impact: A Crisis Amplifying Poverty

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on poverty in the Philippines. In 2020, the pandemic halted economic growth, leading to even higher unemployment rates. As this trend continued into 2021, poverty rates rose to 18.1 percent (World Bank). This amounts to just under 20 million people. And though the economy continues to recover, this recovery is uneven, with the poorest households benefiting the least. As improvements are bringing many areas back to normal, communities in many remote areas still struggle to bring their economies back to even just the already challenging pre-pandemic levels.

One constant struggle for families living in poverty is food insecurity. And according to sources such as the National Library of Medicine , this became even more significant during the pandemic. Almost two-thirds (61.2%) of households experienced moderate to severe food insecurity during the many months of quarantine. And with rising food prices and limited natural resources, vulnerable households often had to limit their food intake. This caused a lack of proper nutrition, particularly for children. Outreach International has implemented an effective method of combating food insecurity for even the most impoverished families. Our partners in OPI have helped community-led organizations develop rice loans . These are low-interest loans of rice or the funds to buy it. And because the communities manage these loans themselves, borrowers can avoid predatory outside lending institutions and can deal with people they know and trust.

Initiatives That Changed the Reality

In response to the challenges posed by the pandemic, both the Philippine government and organizations like Outreach International have implemented various initiatives to alleviate poverty and its effects. Some organizations have provided health services and relief assistance to affected communities. Such initiatives are essential in mitigating the immediate impact of the crisis and helping vulnerable populations in the short term.

But Outreach International also focuses on more long-term and sustainable initiatives that can forever break the cycle of poverty . Our methodology of community-led development allows people who live in chronic poverty to learn that they have the power within themselves to improve their lives permanently. Our partners in the Philippines, Outreach Philippines Incorporated (OPI), work with leaders in communities to identify their own unique poverty-related issues, and then mobilize to solve them. They learn how to develop networks with government agencies and NGOs that are able to provide resources. And they learn how to set ever-increasing goals of improvement, leading to continuous development that is sustainable for generations.

Join the Cause: How You Can Help

You can choose to play a role in alleviating poverty in the Philippines. And there are so many ways to help , from donating to Outreach International to fundraising to volunteering . By working together, we can collectively make a difference in the lives of those affected by poverty in the Philippines.

Share This Post

Related posts.

5 Questions: Meet Dr. John Herron

A Community Illuminated: Solar Streetlights in Lelibadi, India

Sanitation Microloans to Improve In-Home Sanitation

By providing an email address. I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge that I have read the Privacy Policy .

Poverty and inequality in the Philippines

The new World Bank (WB) report “Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in the Philippines: Past, Present, and Prospects for the Future” is a welcome reminder of what is needed for the country, and the government’s urgent agenda on the dual malaise of poverty and inequality. This had been a persistent challenge to the country, not only historically but also comparatively in the context of the Asean, especially its original neighbors in the region.

The WB paper is well-organized, starting with trends in the past 30 years, the present structural causes, future prospects, and policy recommendations. First, poverty rate declined from 49.2 percent in 1985 to 18.1 percent in 2021. Inequality (Gini index) at 42.4 percent in 1985, after climbing to 49.2 percent, trended back down to 42.3 percent in 2018. The shift of workers, including the poorer ones, to more productive sectors with wage income, besides expanded subsidy, largely accounted for the reduction in poverty. As well, better access to services and assets helped the downtrend in inequality to its previous level.

Nonetheless, the Philippines ranks as the 15th most unequal of 63 countries. More than half of laborers with only elementary schooling or less are in agriculture. Household heads who are college graduates have average per capita income fourfold higher than for household heads with no more than elementary education.

Inequality begins early in life and typically is sustained over the life cycle, starting with antenatal care and postnatal care which are disproportionately accessible to poorer families and mothers with lower education. Which leads to markedly higher rates of stunting, underweight, and wasting among poor families. Then children of poor households are greatly disadvantaged as regards schooling that links to future work and income opportunities. All this leads to intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Unequal distribution of hospitals, health centers, and educational institutions across subnational regions/provinces further worsens poverty and inequality. One bright note is that the Philippines is first in gender equality in Asia and 19th in the world. However, while women have generally higher education attainment than men, their labor force participation rate has been lower.

While the WB paper is an edifying read, it has a limited past perspective, thereby ignoring the population factor, which has made a crucial difference in the current state of the country vis-à-vis its Asean neighbors that used to trail it. The Philippines initiated population management-cum-family planning (PM-FP) program in 1970, along with other Asean countries. However, while the others sustained their programs over time without letup, the Philippines was constrained to jettison its own program in the late ’70s on orders of President Marcos Sr., who acceded for political expediency to the demands of the Catholic Church hierarchy.

In 1970, the Philippines’ population was 36.6 million and Thailand’s was 36.9 million. It had a gross national income (GNI) per capita of $220 close to Thailand’s $210, and both countries had identical poverty incidence at 13 percent.

Indonesia, with a very expansive land area (or resource base), had a much larger population of 115 million and also initiated its PM-FP program in 1970, but its GNI per capita was only $80. Malaysia, with a much smaller population of 11 million in 1970, started its program in 1966, and its GNI per capita was $370.

Fast forward to 2020, the foregoing indicators had dramatically diverged. Philippine population ballooned to nearly 110 million, while Thailand’s rose to slightly less than 70 million. GNI per capita was $3,430 in 2020 ($3,850 in 2019) for the Philippines, and $7,050 ($7,407 in 2019) for Thailand. On the other hand, poverty rate was estimated at 18.1 percent in 2021 (16.7 percent in 2018) for the former, and 8.8 percent in 2020 (6.2 percent in 2019) for the latter.

Indonesia’s population increased to 274 million in 2020. Its GNI per capita rose sharply to $3,870 in 2020 ($4,050 in 2019). Its poverty rate at 13 percent in 1970 was brought down to 9.8 percent by 2020. Malaysia’s population was up to 33 million in 2020, and its GNI per capita escalated exponentially to $10,580 ($11,230 in 2019), which enabled Malaysia to drastically cut its poverty rate to 8.4 percent in 2020 from a high of 49.7 percent in 1970.

The foregoing indicators show that the Philippines had the fastest growing population (threefold in 50 years) and also the largest relative to land area in all of Asean. As regards economic indicators, it has considerably lagged behind its original Asean neighbors, being the last to achieve demographic transition, thereby falling to bottom of the pile from the top in the ’60s to mid-’80s. One wonders, therefore, why the WB paper has eschewed the population factor in their analysis of poverty and inequality. It can be recalled that in the mid-1960s through to the mid-1990s, the World Bank had a major population program touted as a success in many developing countries, save the Philippines, unfortunately. So, is the program now regarded as an “elephant in the room” sleeping and not to be disturbed?

—————-

Subscribe to our daily newsletter

Ernesto M. Pernia is professor emeritus of economics, University of the Philippines Diliman, and former secretary of socioeconomic planning, National Economic and Development Authority.

Fearless views on the news

Disclaimer: Comments do not represent the views of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments which are inconsistent with our editorial standards. FULL DISCLAIMER

© copyright 1997-2024 inquirer.net | all rights reserved.

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. To find out more, please click this link.

KEY FINDINGS Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in the Philippines: Past, Present, and Prospects for the Future

Download the Full Report

• 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.

This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser. To learn more about cookies, click here .

• Bangladesh affairs
• latest technology
• Synonyms and antonyms
• Latest update offer

Poverty in the Philippines Essay – 1040 words – Essay On Poverty in the Philippines

Poverty is perhaps the most major burning issue in Philippines. The present scenario of poverty isn’t comfortable here. Corresponding to its temperament, destitution in the Philippines emerged from the fast populace development in the country. Poverty is the burning issue in philippines.

The impacts of it are truly noticeable in nature. Neediness makes numerous Filipinos not seek after their schooling. Others appear to be satisfied with their lives as poor. Numerous guardians can’t bear to send their kids to class in light of the fact that, of the monetary issue. The greater part who are influenced by this issue is the individuals who are living in the mountain regions. Some of them live miles from schools.

This is on the grounds that it is simpler for them to take than to go through finding or discovering a line of work. Destitution and wrongdoing have an exceptionally “private” relationship that has been portrayed by specialists from all fields, from sociologists to business analysts. The UN and the World Bank both divisions have a position high off the wrongdoings on the rundown of obstructions to a nation’s turn of events.

This implies that legislatures attempting to manage destitution regularly likewise need to confront the issue of wrongdoing as they attempt to foster their nation’s economy and society overall, the additional time you spend at school the less vicious you will turn into. Schools don’t simply show you history or math, they show you how to live in the public arena. In any case, the genuine issue is kids in poor metropolitan regions in any event, going to class by any stretch of the imagination? Are they acquiring any friendly abilities while being methodically segregated?

Individuals living alongside contaminated spots are influenced by their ill-advised cleanliness and metropolitan tenants are considerably more influenced by their lacking admission of quality food sources. The absence of admittance to exceptionally nutritious food varieties, particularly in the current setting of rising food costs, is a typical reason for ailing health. Helpless taking care of practices, for example, deficient breastfeeding, offering some unacceptable food varieties, and not guaranteeing that the youngster gets sufficient nutritious food, add to ailing health. This is the motivation behind why numerous youngsters kicked the bucket, it is a regional youngster every year.

Table of Contents

Essay On Poverty In The Philippines

Contrasted and kids whose families had salaries of essentially double the neediness line during their youth, helpless kids finished two less long stretches of tutoring, acquired not exactly half so much, worked 451 fewer hours out of each year, gotten $826 each year more in food stamps as grown-ups, and are almost multiple times as prone to report helpless by and large wellbeing. Helpless guys are more than twice as liable to be captured.

For females, destitution is related with a more than fivefold improvement in the probability of bearing a youngster without any father present before age 21″ (Duncan, 93). Without a doubt, youngsters experiencing childhood in neediness come from single-parent families. The impacts of destitution take an instrument since no one needs to be poor so individuals take the necessary steps to take care of their families whether it be selling drugs or burglarizing individuals will take the necessary steps to remain alive. The Causes and Effects of Poverty

Currently, destitution is perhaps the most shocking issue on the planet. There is a colossal number of individuals that bite the dust each year because of the absence of good guidelines for living like schooling, occupations, food, and medical services. Numerous nations all throughout the planet have an assortment of individuals who need assistance to live in troublesome conditions. Be that as it may, very few individuals from created nations help these sorts of individuals who are out of luck. Destitution has an assortment of causes, and it additionally has many adverse consequences.

Poverty in the Philippines Essay

A few factors that brought about the drop in neediness are the extension of occupations outside the farming area, government moves and getting qualified Filipinos to help through the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. This specific program which is an administration cash-present venture has diminished neediness by 25%.

 A large portion of the Philippines is hit with huge tropical storms and still have a furnished clash. These situations are a genuine battle to the regular specialist who, even following a monotonous day, actually returns home poor. Because of these elements, numerous residents wind up leaving behind ranch work and go get work in assembling centres in the metropolitan spaces of the country. These positions outside the horticultural vault have represented 66% of the advancement in lessening neediness in the Philippines.

One of the critical procedures to help cut down neediness in the Philippines is giving conception prevention to poor people. In an extreme move for the intensely populated Catholic country, the President made promptly accessible anti-conception medication to almost 6 million ladies who can’t bear the cost of it.

Giving contraception is a useful asset for families who currently have full command over family arranging. The expectation is by giving the ladies and nuclear families more control, they will have fewer youngsters. This, thus, will imply that families can give all the more mindfully. This new approach will help the public authority arrive at its objective of lessening destitution by 13% by 2022.

The current Filipino populace is at 104 million and keeps on increasing at a disturbing pace of 1.7 % every year. This new law will empower families to control the number of kids they need. It will likewise ideally bring down the populace rate to 1.4 per cent every year once the government completely execute the law.

Despite the fact that the Philippines have buckled down in the past to lessen their neediness and stay aware of their neighbours China, Vietnam and Indonesia, they actually have far to go. Marak K. Warwick of The World Bank accepts that with a strong establishment there is motivation to be hopeful that the Philippines can accomplish their objective.

The objective for the Philippine government is to make more positions, further develop efficiency, put resources into wellbeing and sustenance while zeroing in on diminishing neediness. On the off chance that the public authority can execute its arrangements effectively, it is fit for decreasing destitution in the Philippines by 13 to 15 per cent by 2022.

Frequently Asked Questions?

What is Poverty?

what is poverty in philippines ?

What are the main causes of poverty in the philippines?

solutions to poverty in the philippines essay

Paragraph on Poverty

Paragraph on the life of a farmer

Related posts:

• Paragraph on Poverty | poverty paragraph|
• essay on climate change in 250 words| climate change essay for students
• My aim in life paragraph | My aim in life essay |
• Water pollution paragraph | 100,150, 200,250 words | |

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

 a school library paragraph ।  a school library paragraph for class 10।, international women’s day 100,150,200,250,300 words paragraph, female education paragraph- 100,150,200 & 250 words, a rainy day paragraph – 100,150,200,250 & 300 words, paragraph on social media- paragraph on social media in english, internet paragraph | 100,120,150,200, 250,300 words |paragraph on internet for hsc|, leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

EDITOR PICKS

 a school library paragraph ।  a school library paragraph for class..., popular posts, টিভিতে প্রচারিত নতুন ক্লাস রুটিন ২০২০|৬ষ্ঠ থেকে দশম শ্রেনী, ৬ষ্ঠ থেকে দশম শ্রেনীর ২য় ধাপের অনলাইন নতুন ক্লাস রুটিন |new..., ৩য় ধাপের ৬ষ্ঠ-১০ম শ্রেনীর অনলাইন ক্লাস রুটিন, popular category.

• General 229
• Learn More 19
• Paragraph 18
• latest technology 16
• Privacy Policy
• facebook page
• Terms and Conditions

Computer paragraph| Paragraph on computer |

Environment pollution paragraph, air pollution paragraph for ssc hsc beginner intermediate and advance level.