Publication: Making Growth Work for the Poor: A Poverty Assessment for the Philippines
Loading...
Published
2018-06
ISSN
Date
2018-07-10
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The report emphasizes the importance of breaking the cycle of inequitable investment in human capital and lack of well-paying job opportunities that trap the poor in poverty, generation after generation. Children from poor households start life at a disadvantage. Malnourished and stunted, with poor access to quality health care, they are less likely to learn the skills they need and fulfill their potential. As adults, therefore, they earn low incomes and cannot afford to invest in their own children. They have little to meet their basic needs and nothing to save against emergencies. Frequent natural disasters buffet the poor, whose limited means to cope and disproportionate suffering push them deeper into poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace. In the parts of the country affected by conflict, where physical assets have been destroyed, families displaced, and human capital eroded, people are trapped in a cycle of conflict and poverty. In addition to the challenges of addressing poverty, the Philippines is hindered by the limited expansion of its middle class. In the East Asia region over 2002-2015, the share of population that is economically secure and middle class increased from just over one fifth to nearly two-thirds, but the share in the Philippines increased from 37 percent to just 44 percent. The lack of well-paying jobs limited the gains for labor from structural transformation. Every year, 1 percent of the employment shifted out of agriculture, but most of those workers end up in low-end services jobs. Such limited gains for labor could negatively affect the country’s long-term competitiveness. The report concludes that making the pattern of growth more inclusive and providing more well-paying jobs will be crucial to helping people achieve higher and more stable incomes. It claims that steps to accelerate poverty reduction include creating more well-paying jobs; improving productivity in all sectors, including agriculture; reducing income and wealth inequality through more investments in people and skills development, enhancing the ability of the poor to participate in growth; rebuilding conflict-affected areas; and better management of risks and protection of the vulnerable.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2018. Making Growth Work for the Poor: A Poverty Assessment for the Philippines. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29960 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Making the New Indonesia Work for the Poor(Washington, DC, 2006-11)Indonesia stands at the threshold of a new era and at an important juncture of its history. After the historic economic, political and social upheavals at the end of the 1990s, Indonesia has started to regain its footing. The country has largely recovered from the economic and financial crisis that threw millions of its citizens back into poverty in 1998 and saw it regress to a low-income status. Recently, it has once again crossed the threshold, making it one of the world's emergent middle-income countries. Likewise, poverty rates that increased by over one-third during the crisis fell back to pre-crisis levels in 2005, despite rising somewhat in 2006 largely driven by hefty rice price increases in late 2005 and early 2006. Meanwhile, politically and socially Indonesia has seen some major transformations: it is now a country with a vibrant emergent democracy, a newly decentralized government, and far greater social openness and public debate. The purpose of this report is to identify the nature and key constraints to poverty reduction in today's Indonesia and to provide concrete recommendations on how Indonesia can move forward to achieve its poverty reduction objectives. It aims to contribute to the policy debate and decision-making process in Indonesia by putting forth: (i) new and more comprehensive analysis of empirical poverty diagnostics; and (ii) suggestions on concrete policies and programs for a strategic action-plan to achieve Indonesia's stated poverty-reduction objectives. This report lays out how Indonesia can better align policies and programs to achieve the key poverty indicators in which Indonesia is lagging and that are identified by planning documents such as the National Strategy for Poverty Reduction (SNPK) and Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJM).Publication Making Poor Haitians Count : Poverty in Rural and Urban Haiti Based on the First Household Survey for Haiti(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008-03)This paper analyzes poverty in Haiti based on the first Living Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole country and representative at the regional level. Using a USD1 a day extreme poverty line, the analysis reveals that 49 percent of Haitian households live in absolute poverty. Twenty, 56, and 58 percent of households in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas, respectively, are poor. At the regional level, poverty is especially extensive in the northeastern and northwestern regions. Access to assets such as education and infrastructure services is highly unequal and strongly correlated with poverty. Moreover, children in indigent households attain less education than children in nonpoor households. Controlling for individual and household characteristics, location, and region, living in a rural area does not by itself affect the probability of being poor. But in rural areas female headed households are more likely to experience poverty than male headed households. Domestic migration and education are both key factors that reduce the likelihood of falling into poverty. Employment is essential to improve livelihoods and both the farm and nonfarm sector play a key role.Publication Making Regional Cooperation Work for South Asia's Poor(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)South Asia has attracted global attention because it has experienced rapid GDP growth over the last two decades. What is not so well known is that South Asia is the least integrated region in the world. South Asia has opened its door to the rest of the world but it remains closed to its neighbors. Poor market integration, weak connectivity, and a history of friction and conflict have resulted in two South Asias. The first South Asia is dynamic, growing rapidly, highly urbanized, and is benefiting from global integration. The second South Asia is rural, land locked, full of poverty, and lagging. The divergence between the two South Asias is on the rise. Policy makers in South Asia have realized that countries and regions can not grow in isolation. The unique geography of South Asia-distance and density--has the potential to raise growth through increased flow of labor, capital, ideas, technology, goods and services within the region and with the rest of the world. Most lagging regions, in terms of both per capita income and poverty incidence, in South Asia are either land-locked or located in the border areas. Regional cooperation and market integration will unlock the development of these lagging regions in South Asia.Publication Making Work Pay in Bangladesh : Employment, Growth, and Poverty Reduction(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)The objective of this report is to analyze the important roles of labor markets, employment, productivity, and labor income in facilitating shared growth and promoting poverty reduction in Bangladesh. First, the report provides a background discussion of poverty, reform, and growth in Bangladesh. Following that, it gives an overview of the labor market, describing the country's demographics, the institutional structure of the labor market, and the labor market indicators. Then a poverty profile of the labor market is developed, followed by a discussion of the income sources and a decomposition of poverty reduction. A number of selected issues are discussed in the final section, including rural versus urban conditions; women, and children in the labor market; self-employment and household employment; and socioeconomic inequalities.Publication Making Work Pay in Madagascar : Employment, Growth, and Poverty Reduction(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008)There is little doubt that economic growth contributes significantly to poverty reduction; however, countries clearly differ in the degree to which income growth translates into reduced levels of poverty. Although cross-country estimates suggest that differences in the responsiveness of poverty to income growth account for a small fraction of overall differences in poverty changes across countries, from the point of view of an individual country these differences may have significant implications for poverty reduction, especially in the short term. The report is structured into eight chapters, beginning with this introduction. Chapter two describes the data and the main definitions used in this report. Chapter three provides the socioeconomic context of the study, with a particular emphasis on growth, poverty, and labor market characteristics. Chapter four takes a look at the linkages between macro and microeconomic data by reviewing the ways in which changes in aggregate and sectoral labor productivity translate into individual earnings as gathered from the household surveys. Chapter five also reviews the relationships between productivity and earnings by looking at the linkages between changes in aggregate and sectoral labor productivity data (macro) and changes in individual earnings as gathered from the household surveys (micro). Chapter six examines the origins and determining factors of household earnings and employment and assesses their impact on poverty and poverty reduction. Chapter seven analyzes the individual and household characteristics that are associated with having either 'good' jobs or 'bad' jobs and reviews the question of whether there may be barriers preventing the movement of workers from bad to good labor market segments. Finally, chapter eight describes the main conclusions of this report and provides suggestions for future work based on these conclusions.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication Linking Social Protection and Humanitarian Assistance in the Philippines(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03)There is an increasing amount of literature discussing the integration of humanitarian assistance into social protection systems or the linkage of disaster risk responses with specific social safety net programmes. The nexus maybe seen through synergies via common frameworks, platforms and systems utilized. The Philippines continues to tackle the problems of poverty and vulnerability among its 100 million population. It lies in the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and is visited regularly by typhoons, ravaged by flooding, and occasionally hit by destructive earthquakes. It also has two long running conflicts with rebel groups that have displaced thousands of its citizens in hot areas. Despite being a middle income country and owing to the recurrent nature of crises, the country has a permanent presence of humanitarian actors (UN agencies, international, and national NGOs) ready to complement government efforts during emergencies. This specific case study showcases the linking of humanitarian assistance and social protection in two instances where cash transfer for relief and recovery by humanitarian agencies, the World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), successfully “piggybacked” on the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps), a lead social protection programme of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), during the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan (2013).Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Pantawid Pamilya 2017 Assessment(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09)This is the fourth benefit incidence analysis of the Philippines’ conditional cash transfer program that uses standard measures to assess the implementation performance of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. The analysis shows that despite the program’s rapid expansion since it was piloted in 2007, it maintains good targeting accuracy, progressivity, and cost efficiency in delivering assistance to the poor. However, the recent halt in program expansion and use of outdated targeting system have resulted in lower coverage levels and incidence rates among the poor. Also, the inability to adjust benefit levels with inflation has resulted in lower generosity of benefits. Still, using the latest nationwide household survey data for 2017, the analysis shows that Pantawid Pamilya helps reduce poverty incidence and income inequality by 1.3 percentage point and 0.6 percentage point, respectively. Adjustments in the benefit level and program coverage are recommended to maintain the program’s relevance, adequacy of assistance, sustained impact on beneficiary welfare.Publication Employment and Poverty in the Philippines(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)This study analyzes labor market performance in the Philippines from the perspective of workers’ welfare. It argues that pervasive in-work poverty is the main challenge facing labor policy. Poverty is primarily due to low earning capacity of the poor and to their limited access to regular and productive jobs. Behind these are the two interrelated root causes of in-work poverty—low education of the poor, and the scarcity of productive job opportunities. The labor market is segmented into “good” and “bad” jobs, with the poor working in the latter. They hold jobs that are informal, temporary or casual, and low-paid. Widespread informality means that the poor neither benefit from the minimum wage policy nor from employment protection legislation. They do not benefit from wage growth either, because their bargaining power is weak. “Good” jobs are so few, especially in rural areas, that even better educated workers are often forced to take unskilled jobs and work as low-paid laborers. The reduction of in-work poverty hinges on removing constraints to gainful employment in both supply side (better education and skills) and demand side (better jobs). It is critical that the young poor have improved access to quality education, and be equipped with skills required in the modern sector of the economy. But in parallel, better jobs need to be created, which can be attained from the growth of the formal and higher value added sector of the economy. The process of structural transformation should be supported by effective labor policy. Labor regulations need to be made simpler and more flexible to facilitate the reallocation of labor from less to more productive activities, and from informal to formal sector. Targeted training programs have the potential to address the problem of low skills among the poor workers, especially the young ones. Such programs should be developed on a pilot basis and expanded if proven to be cost-effective.