Philippine Poverty and Inequality Situation (as of March 2008)
You don't understand your Filipina because you don't understand this country. The poor in the United States and other developed countries live a better life than half the population here. Keep in mind that the upper middle class and rich girls of the Philippines are not looking for a foreigner husband. There are 41 pesos (PhP) to a US Dollar. Could you live on a dollar a day? I live here and my home is paid for. My wife and I could not live on less than $1000 (USD) a month and we don't live in great luxury. Its living like a middle class American family. If you want to start understanding your Filipina start trying to understand the conditions in this country and what it is like to live here. For the majority this is a cash starved society.

The net worth of the country’s 10 richest individuals and families in 2006 pegged at US$12.4 billion and was equivalent to the combined income of the country’s poorest 9.8 million households composed of 49 million Filipinos. 10 families are worth more than half the population and 25 % of the Annual National Budget ends up in corruption. The Philippines is the most corrupt in Asia. Do you still wonder why your Filipina wants to get out of here? Most see no future. The rich really do continue to get richer and the squatter settlements continue to grow. People flock from the provinces to the cities in hope of a better income and life. Only problem is there is not enough work for them all, nor is there adequate affordable housing.

Ads for simple jobs like store clerks will read like this: "Must be 5'3" tall, 19-26 years old, college level (means some college), and beautiful". The beautiful means white. This is a country of brown people trying to be white and more skin whitening products are sold here than anywhere else in the world. To get the job you also have to have a physical (at your own cost) and get an NBI clearance (like the FBI). All this for a job that maybe pays the minimum wage if your lucky, and is a totally dead end job. Just running an ad like this in the US would result in class action lawsuits for discrimination.

The sources of the information are listed. We did not make this up! These statistics also cover education and literacy. We've seen very high literacy rates published before for the Philippines. This real data presents a much different picture.

According to the Social Weather Stations (January 2008)
• Almost 1 out of 2 Filipinos see themselves as poor.
• 46% of Filipinos families (estimated 8.1 million families or about 40.5 million Filipinos out
of the 2007 projected population of 86 million) see themselves as poor.

Available data from the Philippine Government
1 out of 3 Filipinos is poor. (2006 NSCB and 2007 NSO population projection data).

Other sources of data
• There are more than 30 million urban poor or 34% of the population (Ibon, Sept 2006)
• 65 million Filipinos or 80% of the population are struggling to survive on the equivalent
of US$ 2 a day (Ibon, Mar 2007)

Poverty Threshold
• PhP 41 per person per day for food and non-food needs (NSCB, March 2007)
• PhP 27 for food alone which amounts to PhP 9 per meal
• PhP 14 for transportation, shelter, education, health, water, electricity, and
other non-food needs except recreation and communication
• PhP 14,866 annual per capita poverty threshold per Filipino
• PhP 74,340 annual per capita poverty threshold for a family of five (5).
Editor's note: That's $1813 USD a year for a family of 5. You don't want to try to live like that.

Cost of Living Wage
• PhP 158 per person per day for food and non-food needs (NWPC, July 2007)
• PhP 792 family living wage for a family of 5 living in the National Capital Region

Poverty Wages
16.1 million Filipino workers, 6.1 M farmers and fisherfolk and 10 M laborers and unskilled workers, more than 50 percent of the labor force (in 2005) earn monthly wages of around Php5,000-8,000. These are wages that hover around the poverty threshold, which translates to PhP33-53 per person per day (Poverty level is pegged at PhP41 per person per day which is $1 USD). (Malaluan, Nepomoceno A., Dire State of the Nation, The Crisis of Income and Employment in the Philippines , August 26, 2006)

Income Inequality
• Income of top 10% of the income decile is equivalent to 19 times that of the poorest 10
percent. (2006 FIES)
• 3.5 million families or the top 20% of the income decile account for 52.8% or more than
half of the total family income, while the remaining 47.3% was shared by the poorest
80% or 13.9 million families. (2006 FIES)
• 7 out of 10 peasants still do not own land while less than 1/3 of landowners own more
than 80% of agricultural land (Ibon, 2006)
• Oil companies earn PhP 110 million a day in 2006 (Ibon, 2007)
• Income inequality is intensified by regressive taxation (exacerbated by the recently
imposed 12% E-VAT) (Ibon, 2007)

Status of Hunger
• 16.2% of Filipino Families or 2.9 million families (approx. 14.5 million Filipinos) experienced involuntary hunger (SWS, January 2007)
• Around 9.3 million Filipinos do not even meet the 100% dietary energy requirement
(FNRI, 2005)

Coping Strategies on Hunger
• Cutting down the number of meals
• Sleeping through meal times
• Mothers eating smaller portions
• Skipping meals so the rest of the family will get to eat.
• Giving children to the care of relatives / other sympathetic souls
(Datinguinoo, Vinia M, The Face of Hunger is Female, November 24, 2004, PCIJ)

Based on a 2001 study Surrogate Ulam is what one-third of class E & one- tenth of class D eat in lieu of vegetables, fish or meat because they cannot afford them so they eat:
• Salt, soy sauce, bagoong
• Pork / chicken lard
• Softdrinks, coffee
• Instant noodles drowned in plenty of water now constitute a full meal for many poor
families.
• Pagpag, batchoy or kaning baboy (thrown left-overs)
Editor's Note: Add cheap Rum, Brandy, and Beer. You can stay drunk here for a $1 a day and smoke three packs of cigarettes for less than a dollar a day.

Health
• 12 Filipinos die of dirty water daily (Cebu Daily News citing USAID, November 7, 2006)
• More than 90% of all sewage in the Philippines is untreated
(Cebu Daily News citing the World Bank, November 7, 2006)
Editor's Note: Our home is in gated and guarded sub-division. Our septic tank drains right into the street drainage system. No leach fields here!

• 10 Filipino women die daily from childbirth-related complications because they do not
have access to emergency obstetric care. The Philippines is among the highest maternal
mortality rate (estimated at 162 per 100,000 live births) in Asia and the world.
(FIES, 2006)
• Among 0-5 years old, 27% are underweight and 30% are short (FNRI, 2005)

Education
• 1 in 10 Filipinos has never gone to school (6.8 million) (Education Network Quick Stats, 2003)
• 1 in 6 Filipinos is not functionally literate (9.6 million),
• 4.1 million Filipinos are complete illiterate.
• 1 in 3 children/ youth is not attending school(11.6 million)
• About half (51%) of Filipinos had Elementary Education at most
• Among poor Filipinos, only about 70% can read, write and compute
• Only a little over half (54.3%) are fully literate
• Among non-poor Filipinos, 45.3% have completed at least basic education.
• In contrast, only 14.3% have achieved this level of education among the rural poor
Filipinos

Employment
• 3,300 workers leave the country daily (Ibon, Mar 2007)
• 4.1 million Filipinos (or 7.3% of the total labor force) are unemployed (NSO, 2005-
2006)
(According to Cielito Habito, this is based on the new definition of unemployment which was introduced in 2005.)
• 7.47 million Filipinos are considered underemployed (or 13.4% of total labor force).
Despite the slight improvement from 2006 to 2007, the average annual unemployment
rate is still posted at 10.8%, just a little lower than the previous year at 11 percent.
(NSO, 2005-2006)
• 861,000 (NSO 2005-2006) jobs were created by the government at the end 2007 but
revealed the following:
• 142,000 household help or kasambahays
• 116,000 in transport, storage and communication 111,000 in wholesale and retail trade
or what we called the ambulant vendors.
• 103,000 construction workers
• 34,000 in unpaid family labor
These types of work are characterized by low productivity, below-poverty-level wages, and insecure working conditions. (Marivic Raquiza, Social Watch Philippines 2008)

Debt
• Every Filipino owes about PhP 44,000.00. (Debt Quick Stats, Freedom from Debt
Coalition)
• The total debt of the Philippines as of December 2006 is $118.19 billion
• Debt service is allocated PhP612.8 Billion in the 2008 National Budget.

Corruption
• 25 % of the Annual National Budget ends up in corruption. (PS Link)
• Philippines is the most corrupt in Asia (PERC, 2007)

Sources:

Government Agencies
• 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) Final Results, National Statistics
Office (NSO)
• National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB)
• National Wages and Productivity Commission (NSCB)
• Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI)

Institutions
• Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC)
• Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC)
• Ibon Development Foundation (Ibon)
• Social Watch Philippines (SWP)
• Education Network (E-Net)
• Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLink)

For more information please contact the GCAP-Philippines Secretariat at telefax number 920-8949 or visit its office at Rm. 130 Alumni Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City