Empirical explorations
This chapter (together with subsequent chapter 7) presents findings to key question I: It identifies and relates different faces of spatial disparities of poverty and wealth in and between Philippine regions and provinces. Thereby some reference is made to some of their social inequality manifestations. The structure of the chapter follows the list of indicators of disparities of poverty introduced in chapter 2.3.2. Aspects of access and infrastructure are integrated with the social and economic issues they overlap with (no sub-national data is available on technological connectivity).
One implicit aim of this chapter is to identify – with support of a map series, statistics, and scholars’ assessments – those factors, which are particularly important to the production of disparities of poverty and wealth in the Philippines (these will centre the analysis of policy intervention later on). It ought to be noted that this chapter already represents the outcome of the many steps of combined deductive-inductive research; it does not demonstrate individual inductive identification stages. Therefore, those issues detected to be of explicit significance (for example indicators on economic sectors) are discussed in more detail than others.
As outlined, problems related to data quality and availability constrain the research process.
Notwithstanding my counteractions (see chapter 4) these data restrictions to some extent (a) Impede the quantitative findings and suggest to emphasise on their qualitative contents
and to use, if appropriate, other scholars’ assessments complementarily, and
(b) Make comparisons across sub-national spaces, over time, and across variables more difficult.
Ultimately, this data environment can be assumed to significantly reflect both, on the developmental paths of as well as on policy-making vis-à-vis poverty and disparity alleviation in the Philippines (compare theory chapter 3; Balisacan 1997: 2; follow up in chapter 8).
6.1 Economic disparities of poverty and wealth
6.1.1 National government’s income-based perspective
The official ‘faces’ of disparities of poverty in the Philippines are income-based estimates published every three years by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).
Statistically, the data are of comparably low quality because, firstly, their coefficients of variations are often above 10% (NSCB 2003a). Secondly, prior to 2003 the NSCB recorded poverty incidence at regional scales only. It follows that provincial poverty data before 2003 are re-estimates from regional data (NSCB 2003b). Thirdly, NSCB publications on poverty do not cite the population data sources they use (see NSCB 2000; 2002b; 2003a; 2003b).
Figure 6.1: Poverty incidence: Magnitude of urban and rural poor by province, and the poor as a percentage to provincial population in 2000
Perspective Ia: Absolute and relative poverty across provinces
In 2000, poverty incidence is registered by a per capita income less than the annual poverty threshold of 11,605 Pesos (calculated to meet food and non-food requirements18).
Accordingly, the NSCB (2003a) estimated 34% of Filipinos to be poor. Figure 6.1 illustrates the spatiality of poverty incidence by (a) the magnitude of rural and urban provincial poor, and (b) their proportion to the total population. Numerically, the poor cluster in and around Metro Manila, Bicol, the Central Visayas, and Western provinces of Mindanao. Obviously, absolute numbers of the poor are strongly related with population numbers in the respective regions. Negros Occidental is the province with the highest number of 1,312,727 poor, followed by Masbate. Cebu province and Metro Manila rank third and seventh with 1,081,449 and 848,962 poor people respectively19.
Poverty is more a rural than an urban phenomenon. Only in and around Metro Manila and Cebu urban exceeds rural poverty – a result of high urbanisation (compare figure 5.2).
Reversing the absolute numbers, the quartile with the lowest percentage of the poor to the total population (7.5-32.7%) allocates in and around Metro Manila and Central Luzon. The very far North of Luzon, and – strikingly – the small islands of Guimaras and Basilan, as well as the provinces of Cebu, Misamis Oriental, and Davao del Sur also belong to this first quartile, but resemble ‘wealthier islands’ surrounded by provinces with a clearly higher proportional poverty incidence. According to his field observations expert interview 20 regards the information on Guimaras and Basilan to be unrealistic: He would categorise both provinces among the poorest in the country. Provincial ‘pockets’ of the highest percentage of the poor (51.9-70.9%) concentrate in Mindanao, Eastern and Western Visayas, Bicol, and the CAR, and are headed by Masbate, Sulu, Romblon, and Ifugao provinces.
Figure 6.2 shows the poor as a proportion of the regional population since 1991. As a trend, the poors’ percentage in most regions has decreased between 1991 and 1997 and has increased since – a possible indicator for the impact of the economic recession commonly called the ‘Asian crisis’ in 1997/1998. The crisis set off in Thailand, spread over Asia and is, broadly speaking, seen as a result of volatile globalisation-led growth that relies upon global capital and labour division. However, the Philippines were less hard hit than their neighbours.
Yet, the crisis coincided with a severe El-Nino-related drought in the Philippines, which exacerbated the recession (Bautista 2000).
18 The measurement involves construction of (a) food and (b) poverty thresholds: (a) includes income needed to obtain a food basket for urban and rural areas of each region, satisfying a minimum nutrition of 2000 kilocalories per person per day; (b) defines food threshold plus non-food expenditure of household within a 10 percentile band around the food threshold in the income distribution (including costs for clothing, housing, medical care, education, transportation and communication, non-durable furniture, personal care).
19 Note that absolute numbers of the poor evidently reflect general population distribution patterns.
Exceptions in figure 6.2 are the (a) ARMM and Bicol, which have developed the opposite direction, (b) CAR and Cagayan Valley, which have reduced their proportion of the poor continuously since 1994, and (c) Northern Mindanao where the percentage of the poor has almost stagnated.
The figure suggests grouping those regions with similar poverty levels over time. The
‘wealthiest’ group is headed by Metro Manila and includes Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, and Central Visayas. The other extreme with poverty percentages around 60% consists of the ARMM, Bicol, and Central Mindanao. In fact, all Mindanao regions register high-poverty levels, the Visayan medium-levels, the Luzon regions located proximate to Metro Manila low, and the Luzon regions located at a distance to Metro Manila high and medium poverty levels.
Figure 6.2: The poor as a percentage to regional population 1991-2000*