POVERTY IN THE PHILIPPINES: POOR, HUNGRY, INEQUALITY, CAUSES

POVERTY IN THE PHILIPPINES

poor and homeless Filipino family in 2016

Poverty is a serious problem in the Philippines but not as bad as it used to be. Poverty in the Philippines declined to 15.5 percent in 2023, equivalent to about 17.54 million people, from 18.1 percent in 2021 as the economy recovered following the Covid-19 pandemic. This represents a major long-term improvement from 49.2 percent in 1985, but millions of Filipinos remain economically vulnerable. Rising inflation, income inequality, and limited access to stable, well-paying jobs continue to threaten many households with falling back into poverty. According to official estimates, a family of five needed at least 13,797 (about $245) per month in 2023 to meet basic needs. Even so, about 8.7 percent of Filipinos—roughly 9.79 million people—could not afford sufficient food, highlighting persistent subsistence poverty. [Sources: Philippine Statistics Authority; UNICEF; Inquirer.net; Wikipedia]

Significant regional and social disparities remain. Poverty is much more common in rural areas, where 36 percent of residents live in poverty, compared with about 13 percent in urban areas. Food poverty (or those living below subsistence) was around 20 percent of households in 1991, but 32 percent of rural households while only 12 percent of urban households. Two-thirds of the poor are engaged in the agriculture, fishery, and forestry sectors and have an elementary school education or less. Since 1971, the urban poor have become a rising share of the total poor population, but still two-thirds of the poor live in rural areas. The depth of poverty is nearly 2 1/2 times larger in rural areas than in urban areas. The urban poor are concentrated in Luzon, while the rural poor live predominantly in Mindanao and the Visayas. [Source: World Bank]

Conditions are particularly severe in conflict-affected regions such as the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), where poverty levels are among the highest in the country. Children are especially vulnerable; estimates suggest about 10.5 million Filipino children live in poverty. Researchers also note that as much as 58.7 percent of the population lives on less than $8.30 per day, meaning they remain at risk of slipping into poverty if economic conditions worsen.

Several factors contribute to persistent poverty. Rising food prices and inflation strain household budgets, while many jobs—particularly in agriculture—are unstable or poorly paid. The Philippines is also highly vulnerable to typhoons, floods, and other natural disasters, which frequently destroy homes, crops, and livelihoods. Economic inequality remains significant as well; the country’s Gini coefficient was about 40.7 percent in 2021, indicating a wide gap between rich and poor. [Sources: The Borgen Project; World Bank]

Things have gotten better over the years. There were 13 million destitute poor people in the Philippines in 1990, the same number as in 1970. The percentage of the Philippines population under the poverty level was 59 percent in 1961, 39 percent in 1991 and 36 percent in 1994. Between 1961 and 1991, the gap between the average income of the poor in the Philippines and official poverty levels closed by 40 percent according t the World Bank.

Inequality in the Philippines

Pie Chart for Income Distribution in the Philippines (2019) Researchgate

Economic inequality in the Philippines is often described in terms of three broad social classes. The upper class represents roughly 10 percent of the population but controls about 90 percent of the country’s wealth. This group includes major industrialists, corporate leaders, and owners of large agricultural estates or plantations. The middle class makes up around 20 percent of the population and consists mainly of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and other skilled workers. The remaining 70 percent belong to the lower or poor class, which collectively holds only about 10 percent of the national wealth. Many in this group struggle to earn enough to cover basic necessities or save for emergencies, though education and hard work are often seen as possible paths to improving their circumstances. [Source: “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 5: East / Southeast Asia:” edited by Paul Hockings, 1993 |~|]

There is a small wealthy elite and a multitude of rural poor. The richest 20 percent has an income 20 times higher than the poorest 14 percent and 75 percent of the Philippines’s land is owned by 2 percent of the people. Household income or consumption by percentage share lowest 10 percent: 2.9 percent; highest 10 percent: 31.6 percent (2023 est.). This compares to the lowest 10 percent (2.6 percent) and highest 10 percent (33.6 percent) in 2009

The Gini Index (or coefficient) is a statistical measure of economic inequality, commonly representing income or wealth distribution within a nation, ranging from 0 to 1. The Gini Index coefficient for the Philippines was estimated to .39 in 2023 and .45 in 2009. A score of 0 indicates perfect equality (everyone has the same), while 1 indicates maximum inequality (one person has everything). 0.2–0.3 is very low inequality (such as some Scandinavian countries). 0.4 is The World Bank's threshold for high inequality. 0.5–0.7 is High inequality (such as in parts of South America and South Africa). You would think the Philippines would have a higher, more unequal, Gini Index, as there is a very rich elite and lot of rural and urban poor in the country but money that pours in from overseas Filipino workers helps lower the Gini Index.

Poor People in the Philippines

Among the poorest Filipinos, much of the family income comes from small informal businesses and survival activities. Many earn money by selling food or small goods on street corners, collecting recyclable materials to sell at junkyards, or working as hawkers and micro-entrepreneurs. In contrast, households in higher income groups tend to rely more on regular wages and salaries. The poor are commonly found among landless agricultural laborers, small farmers and cultivators, industrial wage workers, street vendors, and scavengers who depend on irregular or low-paying work. [Source: Maria Cecilia T. Ubarra, Worldmark Encyclopedia of National Economies, Gale Group Inc., 2002]

:Flooded urban poor area in Manila in 2009

Most poverty in the Philippines is concentrated in rural areas, where livelihoods depend heavily on agriculture, which often has low productivity and unstable incomes. At the same time, urban poverty has grown as many poor rural families migrate to cities in search of work but end up in low-paying jobs or informal employment, leaving household incomes still inadequate.

Limited access to health services also worsens the situation for poor families. Many communities lack nearby health centers, making it difficult for residents to obtain medical care or family planning services. As a result, some households have larger families than they can adequately support, leading to higher rates of malnutrition and lower educational attainment among children. Poor living conditions—such as overcrowded housing and limited access to clean water and electricity, particularly in urban slums—further compound the hardships faced by many Filipino families.

Individuals are said to be in absolute poverty when they are unable to obtain at least a specified minimum of the food, clothing, and shelter that are considered necessary for continued survival. In the Philippines, two such minimums have been established. The poverty line is defined in terms of a least-cost consumption basket of food that provides 2,016 calories and 50 grams of protein per day and of nonfood items consumed by families in the lowest quintile of the population. In 1988 the poverty line for a family of six was estimated to be P2,709 per month. The subsistence level is defined as the income level that allows purchase of the minimum food requirements only. [Source: Library of Congress]

A survey in 2010 by Social Weather Stations, found that four million Filipino households, or one of five families, experienced hunger at least once during the past three months. Overall hunger was 21.2 percent in March 2010, and a record 24 percent in December 2009. The 1998-2010 average rose was 13.6 percent, the same survey showed. [Source: AFP, July 22, 2010]

Life of the Poor in the Philippines

Plastic sandals, tattered clothing and rotted or missing teeth are the kind of things you see in poor neighborhoods or villages in the Philippines. The number of beggars increases in times of high unemployment. People consider it good luck to give money to a poor person, and so beggars manage to survive. Even the middle class can feel like they are poor. According to one story potatoes have sometimes been so expensive in the Philippines that housewives put some on top of the food in their shopping basket so that everyone will think they are rich.

Poor households in the Philippines tend to combine into extended families to conserve household assets. Thus, larger households are observed as having greater poverty than smaller households: households of 8 or more members represent nearly a third of all the poor. The incidence and severity of poverty is significantly lower among elderly and female headed households in the Philippines, in striking contrast to the evidence from other developing countries, again because these households tend to be absorbed into others. It also reflects women's strong position in the labor market in terms of relative pay and attachment compared with many other Asian countries and even relative to many OECD countries.

One low-income Filipina woman told the Washington Post in the 2000s, "Superficially you can say people are better off [now] because of the material things they didn't used to have. But...people are very much in debt. Some families, yes, have a TV, but they don't have food to eat for the day. Its difficult to compare [to the past], because family life before, and the kind of development we had to keep up with, was different," she said. "During my parent's time, there was no electricity. Now families have put up with whatever is held up as this drumbeat of development, like [having] a TV or an electric fan. And if you don't have it means you are way behind civilization."

Urban Poor in the Philippines

Manila shantytown

A typical poor family in Manila lives a tin-roof shack with electricity and enough room for everyone to sleep on the floor. The poorest Manila squatters live in a one-room tin-roof shack with no electricity and running water and eat a single meal of rice and tiny fish. Some poor families in the Manila areas live in makeshift homes made from shipping containers.

Martin Soong wrote in CNBC: A few afternoons ago, we found ourselves in San Andreas Bukid. Like most slums in Manila, a self-contained world of poverty, pocketed in by high-rise office buildings, malls, and condos. The juxtaposition is still jarring. The streets and alleys we walked through weren't quite post-apocalyptic. But there was a common disorder and displacement; many things, and people, where they shouldn't usually be. Cars and trucks, abandoned in the middle of the street. Kids, running around naked, when they should be in school. Flea-infested mongrels foraging through rotting garbage, rather than being petted in somebody's home. A dead four-year old girl, in a baby casket. [Source: Martin Soong, CNBC, May 8, 2016]

Richard C. Paddock wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “A salesman offered small vials of python oil, guaranteed to cure back pain, heart disease, joint dislocation, rheumatism, cough, arthritis and skin disease. The teeming neighborhood of Antipolo in central Manila is one of the city's poorest. Thousands of families live along the railroad tracks in shanties of scrap wood and metal built one on top of the other, three stories high. Families sleep seven or eight to a room and cook over open fires between the tracks. Every month or so, someone is hit by a train. [Source: Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2006]

Children play in garbage. Old women play mah-jongg on a rickety table. A woman patiently picks lice from a girl's hair. It is not uncommon for families to hold a wake in the middle of the sweltering streets, as Danilo Paredes did for his 18-year-old daughter, Raquel. Lying in an open coffin placed on a table, she looked small for her age, but at peace amid the chaos. Paredes said he didn't know what killed her, only that he didn't have the $25 for the medicine the doctor prescribed. Residents look for any way out. "I hate this place," said Mary Grace Libao, 13. She and her friend, Clarivel de los Santos, also 13, said they wanted to be singers in Japan. "In Japan I will make enough money to buy a house for my family," Clarivel said.

Urban Squatters in the Philippines

Share of population in extreme poverty (1981–2019)

Urban squatters have been a perennial problem or, perhaps, a sign of a problem. Large numbers of people living in makeshift housing, often without water or sewage, indicated that cities had grown in population faster than in the facilities required. In fact, the growth in population even exceeded the demand for labor so that many squatters found their living by salvaging material from garbage dumps, peddling, and performing irregular day work. [Source: Library of Congress, 1991 *]

Most squatters were long-time residents, who found in the absence of rent a way of coping with economic problems. The efforts of the government in the late 1980s to beautify and modernize the Manila area led inevitably to conflict with the squatters who had settled most of the land that might be utilized in such projects. The forced eviction of squatters and the destruction of their shacks were frequent occurrences. *

Many squatters live on land their parents were promised title to decades ago. Many urban services have broken down. UNICEF estimates there are 200,000 street children in the Philippines, with at lest 50,000 in Manila alone. Many sell their bodies to survive or forced into prostitution. The urban poor in some places includes civil servants and teachers.

Two types of organizations have intervened in support of squatters: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and syndicates. The NGOs had a variety of programs, each one representing only a small minority of the actual squatters, but they sustained pressure on the government and demanded land titles and an end to forced evictions as well as help in housing construction. The syndicates were extra-legal entities that provided an informal type of government in the late 1980s, levying fees of as much as 3 billion pesos a year, or about US$120 million. The syndicates allocated land for lots, built roads and sidewalks of sorts, maintained order, and occasionally even provided water and light. In other words, they acted like private developers, although their only claim to the land was forcible seizure. Both the authoritarian Marcos government and the democratic Aquino government found it hard to handle the squatter problem. All proposed solutions contained difficulties, and probably only a major economic recovery in both rural and urban areas would provide a setting in which a degree of success would be possible. *

Rural Poor in the Philippines

City and municipal map of poverty in the Philippines , 2026

About half of the population of the Philippines and two thirds of the country’s poor live in rural areas. Agriculture is the primary and often only source of income for poor rural people, most of whom depend on subsistence farming and fishing for their livelihoods. The poorest of the poor are the indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers who cultivate land received through agrarian reform, landless workers, fishers, people in upland areas and women. In general, illiteracy, unemployment and the incidence of poverty are higher among indigenous peoples and people living in the upland areas. [Source: IFAD]

There are substantial differences in the level of poverty between the regions and provinces and the poverty gap between urban and rural areas is widening. Indigenous people living in highly fragile and vulnerable ecosystems, people in the uplands of the Cordillera highlands and on Mindanao Island are among the poorest in the country.

Floyd Whaley wrote in the New York Times: Poverty is particularly acute in rural areas, where growth has been sluggish in recent years even as the national economy and urban areas have expanded rapidly. The hardest hit has been the fishing sector, which has contracted. Farmers and fishermen are consistently ranked as two of the poorest groups in the country. That is no revelation to Joel Cesista, a 26-year-old fisherman who supports his wife and infant son. A resident of Bataan Province, a poor rural area west of Manila, he cannot find factory work and has no land to farm, so he embarks on a dangerous, marginally profitable effort to find fish in the ocean about twice a month. “There is no permanent work here,” said Mr. Cesista. “All we have is fishing.” [Source: Floyd Whaley, New York Times, June 19, 2013]

Mr. Cesista and four other men take a 33-foot boat nearly 200 miles, or about 320 kilometers, into the South China Sea for a week at a time to fish for tuna. On a good trip, he can earn about $200. He often earns less than that and sometimes, when expenses for fuel, bait and boat rental exceed the catch, he is paid nothing at all. Other times, he is just glad to make it home alive. “We have almost sunk in storms,” he said. “We have no radio and no one to rescue us, except the other fishermen.”

Causes of Rural Poverty in the Philippines

The causes of poverty in rural areas in the Philippines vary widely from island to island. Among the causes of rural poverty are a decline in the productivity and profitability of farming, smaller farm sizes and unsustainable practices that have led to deforestation and depleted fishing waters. Rural areas lag behind in economic growth and they have higher underemployment. This is partly because poor people have little access to productive assets and business opportunities. They have few non-farm income-generating activities, and people lack access to microfinance services and affordable credit. Some vulnerable groups also face specific problems. For example, indigenous peoples have high illiteracy rates and are affected by the encroachment of modern technology and cultures onto traditional norms and practices. Fishers face continuing reduction in their catches and they have few opportunities or skills outside of fishing. Women have limited roles outside of marketing and family responsibilities. [Source: IFAD]

Many rural peasants are little more than indentured servants to the landlord who give the peasants loans which they can not pay back. The landlords then set the prices of the crops and the terms of the payments and make nice profits of the labor the peasants. A typical tenant farmer, called a “tao”, generally doesn’t own the land he works. The landlords who own the land have traditionally been so stingy they don’t even give the farmer a plot of land to grow garden crops. Instead they eat the cash crops they raise—often rice or sugar. When a farmer’s crops run out he must borrow from the landlord, or maybe a Chinese moneylender. The debts accumulate and reach a level that farmer can not pay back. Many feel they have no other choice but to turn to leftist insurgent and Muslim jihadist groups for help.

On how rural Filipino farmers cope with natural disasters, Marjorie Pajaron of Stanford University said: “Farmers are the poorest of the poor in the Philippines, and since the country is in the Pacific Ring of Fire it is frequently hit by natural disasters, including earthquakes, typhoons, and drought. Filipino farmers are very vulnerable because most cannot afford to install irrigation. Instead, they have to depend on rain and their crops are continually susceptible to changes in the weather. There is limited government assistance available to them, and they do not have any formal insurance. In addition, they cannot take out loans because they do not have the collateral. So, I have been looking at how they survive after a natural disaster. The only possible explanation is that they depend on their networks of family and friends. [Source: Marjorie Pajaron, the current Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow in Developing Asia, at Stanford; Sarah L. Bhatia, Shorenstein APARC, FSI Stanford, April 15, 2013 <^>]

I had expected to find that they also depend on their family members abroad, but I havdiscovered that very few have been able to send relatives abroad in the first place. So this cannot be considered a reliable source of support. Instead, they seem to mainly rely on family members who have migrated to Manila and other cities.

According to the New York Times: The Philippine government is trying to address poverty in the country through general economic development, but also through direct intervention. Since 2008, with the support of international organizations, the country has had a conditional cash-transfer program that gives money to the country’s poorest people in return for actions like keeping their children in school.

The program, which is assisting nearly four million families, has received positive reviews from international organizations, but it has also been besieged by allegations of corruption in the distribution of payments. Though the program is not showing an effect on national poverty figures, the government continues to support it. Without the conditional cash transfers, the poverty numbers that we are seeing here could have been higher,” Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said. [Source: Floyd Whaley, New York Times, June 19, 2013]

Poverty in the Philippines in the 1980s and 1990s

A 1997 government survey revealed that over a third of the population (36.7 percent ) lived below acceptable standards. However, the incidence of extreme poverty had declined since 1985, when the comparable figure was 49.2 percent. In 1999, the National Statistics Office estimated that the top 20 percent of the 14.7 million families in the Philippines earned 14 times more than the lowest 20 percent, with incomes of P502.1 billion and P35.8 billion, respectively. [Source: Maria Cecilia T. Ubarra, Worldmark Encyclopedia of National Economies, Gale Group Inc., 2002]

In 1985 slightly more than half the population lived below the poverty line, about the same proportion as in 1971. The proportion of the population below the subsistence level, however, declined from approximately 35 percent in 1971 to 28 percent in 1985. The economic turndown in the early 1980s and the economic and political crisis of 1983 had a devastating impact on living standards. [Source: Library of Congress]

The countryside contained a disproportionate share of the poor. For example, more than 80 percent of the poorest 30 percent of families in the Philippines lived in rural areas in the mid-1980s. The majority were tenant farmers or landless agricultural workers. The landless, fishermen, and forestry workers were found to be the poorest of the poor. In some rural regions--the sugar-growing region on the island of Negros being the most egregious example--there was a period in which malnutrition and famine had been widespread. *

Urban areas also were hard hit, with the incidence of urban poverty increasing between 1971 and 1985 by 13 percentage points to include half the urban population. The urban poor generally lived in crowded slum areas, often on land or in buildings without permission of the owner; hence, they were referred to as squatters. These settlements often lacked basic necessities such as running water, sewerage, and electricity. According to a 1984 government study, 44 percent of all occupied dwellings in Metro Manila had less than thirty square meters of living area, and the average monthly expenditure of an urban poor family was P1,315. Of this, 62 percent was spent on food and another 9 percent on transportation, whereas only P57 was spent on rent or mortgage payments, no doubt because of the extent of squatting by poor families. About 55 percent of the poor surveyed who were in the labor force worked in the informal sector, generally as vendors or street hawkers. Other activities included service and repair work, construction, transport services, or petty production. Women and children under fifteen years of age constituted almost 60 percent of those employed. The majority of the individuals surveyed possessed a high school education, and 30 percent had a skill such as dressmaking, electrical repair, plumbing, or carpentry. Nevertheless, they were unable to secure permanent, full-time positions.

Poverty in the Philippines in the 2000s and Early 2010s

In 2003 per capita gross national income in the Philippines was US$1,080, below the US$1,390 average for lower-middle-income countries. At that time about 11 percent of Filipinos lived on less than US$1 per day and 40 percent on less than US$2 per day, according to the World Bank. The overall poverty rate declined from 33 percent (25.4 million people) in 2000 to 30.4 percent (23.5 million people) in 2003.

Poverty data released by the Philippine government in April 2023 showed little improvement over the previous six years. About 10 percent of Filipinos were living in extreme poverty, meaning they could not meet even their basic food needs. This rate remained unchanged from earlier surveys conducted in 2006 and 2009, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board. [Source: Floyd Whaley, New York Times, June 19, 2013]

The same report estimated that 22.3 percent of Filipino families were living below the poverty line during the first four months of 2012, only slightly lower than 22.9 percent in 2009 and 23.4 percent in 2006. Government estimates indicated that more than nine million extremely poor households were unable to earn the 5,460 (about $135) per month needed for basic food requirements. The figure highlighted the stark contrast between rich and poor in the country, as the amount was roughly equivalent to the cost of a back-row ticket at a major concert in Manila attended by many of the country’s wealthier residents.

Independent studies confirmed that poverty remained widespread. A survey conducted by the polling group Social Weather Stations found that 19.2 percent of Filipino families—about 3.9 million households—reported experiencing hunger at some point, an increase from 16.3 percent in a similar survey conducted a few months earlier. At the same time, the Philippines slipped in the United Nations Human Development Index, ranking 114th out of 187 countries in 2012, down from 105th place in 2007, reflecting ongoing challenges in areas such as health, education, and child welfare.

Causes of Poverty in the Philippines

From one perspective, poverty is a function of total output of an economy relative to its population — GNP per capita — and the distribution of that income among families. In the World Bank's World Development Report, 1990, the Philippines was ranked at the lower end of the grouping of lower middle-income economies. Given its relative position, the country should be able to limit the extent of poverty with a reasonably equitable sharing of the nation's income. In fact, the actual distribution of income was highly skewed. Although considerable underreporting was thought to occur among upper-income families, and incorrect reporting from lack of information was common, particularly with respect to noncash income, the data were adequate to provide a broad overview. [Source: Library of Congress, 1991 *]

In 1988 the most affluent 20 percent of families in the Philippines received more than 50 percent of total personal income, with most going to the top 10 percent. Below the richest 10 percent of the population, the share accruing to each decile diminished rather gradually. A 1988 World Bank poverty report suggested that there had been a small shift toward a more equal distribution of income since 1961. The beneficiaries appear to have been middle-income earners, however, rather than the poor. *

The World Bank report concluded, and many economists associated with the Philippines concurred, that the country's high population growth rate was a major cause of the widespread poverty, particularly in the rural areas. Implementation of a government-sponsored family-planning program, however, was thwarted by stiff opposition from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Church pronouncements in the late 1980s and early 1990s focused on injustice, graft and corruption, and mismanagement of resources as the fundamental causes of Philippine underdevelopment. These issues were in turn linked to the concentration of control of economic resources and the structure of the economy. Land ownership was highly unequal, but land reform initiatives had made little progress. *

In urban areas also, the extent of poverty was related to the concentrated control of wealth. Considerable portions of both industry and finance were highly monopolized. Access to finance was severely limited to those who already possessed resources. The most profitable investment opportunities were often in areas in which tariff or other forms of government protection ensured high profits but did not necessarily result in rapidly expanding employment opportunities. In her election campaign President Aquino pledged to destroy the monopolies and structures of privilege aggravated by the Marcos regime. She looked to the private sector to revitalize the economy, create jobs for the masses of Filipinos, and lead the society to a higher standard of living. The state-protected monopolies were dismantled, but not the monopoly structure of the Philippine economy that existed long before Marcos assumed power. In their privileged positions, the business elite did not live up to the President's expectations. As a consequence, unemployment and, more importantly for the issue of poverty, underemployment remained widespread. *

Efforts to Help Poor People in the Philippines

To address poverty, the Philippine government has adopted a multi-pronged poverty-reduction strategy and aims to lower the poverty rate to about 8 percent by 2028. Key programs include the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) conditional cash-transfer system, education subsidies, and infrastructure development designed to improve economic opportunities. While these initiatives have helped reduce poverty in recent years, organizations such as the World Bank note that the country still faces major challenges in expanding quality employment, improving education, and ensuring that social services reach remote and marginalized communities. [Sources: World Bank; Philippine government reports]

By some reckonings authoritarian government such as South Korea in the 1970s and 80s, China, Indonesia up to the mid 1990s and Singapore have done a better job at alleviating poverty than democracies such as India and the Philippines. The poor in the Philippines have generally been cheated out of their political power by practices such as vote buying and have little say in policy making and have few legal recourses.

In 1987, under President Cory Aquino, the Philippines Congress enacted the Cooperative Code of the Philippines to improve income opportunities, promote self-reliance, and encourage entrepreneurship in rural areas. As of December 2000, 57,470 cooperatives were registered with the Cooperative Development Authority. A cooperative is a collective organization owned and operated by its members. [Source: Maria Cecilia T. Ubarra, Worldmark Encyclopedia of National Economies, Gale Group Inc., 2002]

In 1991, Congress passed the Local Government Code, which expanded basic social services at the grassroots level. Formulated during the Ramos administration, the Social Reform Agenda (1993) is one of the government's most comprehensive development frameworks for combating poverty. Its strategies aim to improve access to basic social services and increase opportunities for employment, income generation, and self-reliance. The Estrada administration established the National Anti-Poverty Commission and allocated 2.5 billion pesos for relevant programs. As a result of the fiscal decentralization enacted in 1991, most traditional poverty alleviation programs except education have become the responsibility of local governments, limiting the ability of the central authorities to implement programs of national priority. At the same time, the current revenue sharing arrangements with local governments (set by a legal formula) do not redistribute resources towards poorer provinces. [Source: World Bank]

In July 2010, the Philippines government said it would give money directly to poor families in an effort to fight a sharp rise in the number of Filipinos enduring severe hunger after a survey came out that reported that about 780,000 families in the Philippines, 4.2 percent of the total population, felt hunger “often or always”.[Source: AFP, July 22, 2010]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 5: East/Southeast Asia:” edited by Paul Hockings, 1993; “Culture Shock!: Philippines” by Alfredo Roces and Grace Roces, Marshall Cavendish International, 2010; National Geographic, Live Science, Philippines Department of Tourism, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Library of Congress, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated March 2026