OUR CHILDREN ARE AT RISK!
by Dr. Romulo A. Virola ¹
Secretary General, NSCB

We in the NSCB constantly seek ways to enhance the relevance of our products and services to development planning. As the government is not always able to provide the resources necessary to allow us to pursue our mission of producing better statistics for better development outcomes, we are fortunate that we can still bank on the donor community for assistance.

With support from the UNDP, the collaboration of and initiatives from the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) and the consultancy services of Dr. Welfredo R. Patungan of the UP School of Statistics, the NSCB undertook a project called the “Development of Poverty Statistics for the Basic Sectors”. The objective was to generate poverty statistics for all the fourteen basic sectors of Philippine society defined under RA 8425, namely, farmer-peasant, artisanal fisherfolk, workers in the formal sector and migrant workers, workers in the informal sector, indigenous people and cultural communities, women, differently-abled persons, senior citizens, victims of calamities and disasters, youth and students, children, urban poor, non-government organizations and cooperatives.

At the time the project was started, the most recent and useful data available were for 2000 – the 2000 Family Income and Expenditures Survey, the fourth quarter 2000 round of the Labor Force Survey, the 2000 Census of Population and Housing and the 2000 Philippine Poverty Statistics². Due to data constraints, however, estimates were possible only for 8 of the 14 basic sectors: women, youth, children, senior citizens, urban poor, migrant and formal workers, farmers and fishermen. The findings of the study were presented during the NSCB Executive Board meeting on 22 May 2006 and the following are some of the highlights, subject to the limitations cited in the project report³ :

1. In terms of magnitude, the smallest of the eight sectors are the fishermen, the senior citizens and the farmers who comprise 12, 60 and 68, respectively, out of every 1000 Pinoys⁴ . The largest groups are the urban population and women who comprise close to 500 each, followed by children at 433.

2. In terms of poverty incidence, the poorest are the fishermen, the farmers and the children. Program planners should look at the following figures very carefully:

51 out of 100 fishermen are poor;
47 out of 100 farmers are poor;
42 out of 100 children are poor;
32 out of 100 women are poor;
28 out of 100 senior citizens are poor;
24 out of 100 youth are poor;
19 out of 100 migrant and formal sector workers are poor; and
17 out of 100 urban residents are poor.


3. In terms of the estimated number of the poor among the 8 basic sectors, the biggest numbers come from children (14,093,102), women (12,227,315), the urban poor ( 6,784,016) and the youth (5,476,061) as shown in TABLE 1. While the fishermen and the farmers are two of the three sectors with the highest proportion of the poor, in terms of absolute number of the poor, they are actually among the smallest, together with the senior citizens.

   TABLE 1 POVERTY STATISTICS FOR 8 BASIC SECTORS, 2000.
   BASIC SECTOR	NUMBER OF MEMBERS	NUMBER OF POOR MEMBERS	POVERTY INCIDENCE (%)	COEFFICIENT OF VARIATION (%)
   1. Children	33,134,812	14,093,102	42.5	1.7
   2. Women	37,906,245	12,227,315	32.3	1.6
   3. Urban sector	39,145,194	6,784,016	17.3	2.5
   4. Youth	22,379,332	5,476,061	24.5	1.9
   5. Migrants & Formal workers	14,012,847	2,622,324	18.7	2.2
   6. Farmers	5,213,968	2,431,995	46.6	1.9
   7. Senior Citizens	4,557,134	1,277,139	28.0	3.0
   8. Fishermen	885,272	450,020	50.8	3.6
   Total Philippines	77,136,4405	25,422,041	33.0	1.6

    

4. Considering that the poor youth and the poor children together comprise a big chunk of our poor⁶ , TABLE 1 tells us that it is very important that poverty alleviation programs concentrate on interventions for our children and the youth. Our children and our youth may lack the power to express their concerns but they certainly need more attention than what we have been giving them. Nutrition and scholarship programs should therefore receive utmost attention from NAPC and the other agencies looking after the poor. And don’t you think we would be so much better off, really, if each rich member of civil society offered at least one full scholarship grant that allows one member of a poor family to graduate from college. Or all congressmen and senators would follow the footsteps of some of their colleagues like Cong. Joey Salceda, Cong. Jose de Venecia, Cong. Antonio M. Diaz, Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr. and Sen. Manny Villar who either spend for the education of their constituents or have filed bills providing additional privileges for students. Pork barrel, fed to the right people, can be good, you know!

5. In terms of geographic location, where do we find most of our poor children and our poor youth? TABLE 2 shows that the highest concentration of our poor children can be found in Western Visayas (Region VI), the Bicol Region ( Region V) and Central Visayas (Region VII). The next two regions with the largest concentration of our poor children are CALABARZON (Region IVA) and Eastern Visayas ( Region VIII). And if you want to help our poor youth, you can find them mostly in the same three regions, sad to say: Western Visayas, Bicol and Central Visayas. ARMM and Central Luzon (Region III) follow next. The political leaders of these regions definitely face a big challenge as depicted by these statistics, and I hope they will rise to the occasion. ( I won’t be surprised though if the initial reaction we get is a loud, big question on the reliability of the statistics for their respective regions! )

   TABLE 2 LOCATION OF POOR CHILDREN AND POOR YOUTH BY REGION, 2000
   REGION	POOR CHILDREN1		POOR YOUTH2
   	Number	Rank	Number	Rank
   VI	1,531,637	1	629,198	1
   V	1,480.551	2	497,124	2
   VII	1,082,718	3	409,397	3
   IVA	959,162	4	340,103	8
   VIII	951,679	5	275,126	10
   ARMM	913,911	6	408,419	4
   III	907,557	7	404,556	5
   X	860,135	8	349,074	7
   X11	848,175	9	383,873	6
   I	760,135	10	319,370	9
   IX	695,940	11	258,661	12
   XI	659,075	12	273,137	11
   IVB	619,268	13	222,088	13
   CARAGA	591,290	14	214,666	14
   NCR	511,714	15	173,219	16
   II	423,822	16	195,300	15
   CAR	296,335	17	122,750	17
   1 Children are those below 18 years of age.
   2 Youth are those from 15 to 30 years of age.

The fourteen basic sectors cited in RA 8425 are supposed to be disadvantaged but frankly, I do not understand why workers in the formal sector and even nongovernment organizations ( many of them pay higher salaries to their staff than the government!) are on the list! How could our poverty alleviation programs be effective if resources leak out to the wrong priority sectors?

Nonetheless, the project results enrich the database of information on poverty, which if properly mined should lead to policies and programs that can help many of our kababayans hurdle the poverty threshold. Provided, that, our politicians and decision-makers can muster the political will to do what is best for our people! Will they, Ever? Let us hope so!

In our war against poverty, we have to know how to optimize the use of our very limited resources! Meaning that we have to set our priorities right. We can no longer afford to continue wasting our precious resources on programs that do not benefit the ones who need them the most. Let us focus our interventions on programs that benefit our children and our youth! Those of us who are really not as worse off as our other kababayans, let us not be greedy – let us not fall in line for goods and services meant for those who have less in life! And for those among us with the resources and a golden heart, the statistics stare at us with a sad story: our children and the future of our Fatherland living in Western Visayas, Bicol and Central Visayas are AT RISK! Let us help them.

Meanwhile, in memory of the sacrifices made by our heroes, let us celebrate our Independence more meaningfully. Let us unite as a people for the future of our children!

Reactions and views are welcome thru email to the author at ra.virola@nscb.gov.ph.

 

_______________
¹ Secretary General of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and Chairman of the Statistical Research and Training Center (SRTC). He holds a Ph. D. in Statistics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, U.S.A. and has taught mathematics and statistics at the University of the Philippines. He is also a past president of the Philippine Statistical Association.

² The 2000 poverty statistics used in the project were based on the final FIES results. The NSCB has since then released the final poverty estimates for 2003 and the updated estimates for 2000 using an improved methodology as recommended by the Technical Committee on Poverty Statistics and approved by the NSCB Executive Board.

³ Development of Poverty Statistics for the Basic Sectors, January 2006.

⁴ The sectors overlap, e.g. a fisherman can also be a senior citizen; children are those aged below 18, while the youth refers to those aged 15 to 30; etc.

⁵ Based on the FIES estimate. The 2000 Census of Population and Housing count is 76,504,077.

⁶ In 2000, 12,227,315 women were estimated to be poor but 13,194,726 men were also counted as poor

Posted 13 June 2006.