PLAIN THOUGHTS – Beyond the sphere of income inequality

A courier service company outside the country or elsewhere in the Philippines may charge a standard fee for a parcel of goods addressed to a resident of barangay Tapak, Davao City. The addressee, after all, resides in a city classified as highly-urbanized.
Unknown to many—including perhaps to some Davao City residents—Tapak is the northernmost barangay of the city exactly 160 kilometers from the downtown. In going to the village, one has to take a circuitous route via the municipality of Kapalong or Panabo in the neighboring Davao del Norte province.
Reaching the village is definitely not an easy experience. While there are a few jeepneys plying up to the adjacent barangays, getting to Tapak proper takes at least four hours either through horseback riding or through the improvised habal-habal motorcycle, negotiating an arduous and hilly access road.
Tapak’s geographic isolation appears to be the primary factor why it topped as the most poor barangay in Davao City based on a string of socio-economic indicators—ranging from health and education to shelter and food security—used in the conduct of participatory rapid appraisal by the local government.
Like the rest of the country, poverty in Davao City remains dominant in the rural setting. Of the ten poorest barangays in the city, nine are in the rural areas, home to around 280,000 out of the 1.4 million Davao City’s total population.
Overall, more than a third (or almost 4 in every ten) of people in the Philippines live in poverty.
Majority of the country’s poor are transient or seasonal who are vulnerable to episodes of economic contraction, armed conflict, man-made calamity and human-induced natural disaster that often result to temporary loss of jobs and the corresponding income.
When the number of transient poor increases, the prevailing income inequality widens as the proportion of population with income lower than the poverty line also takes a sharp turn.
Some of the contemporary economists are of the opinion that the core poverty problem among the transient poor is not the presence of abject conditions but rather the unequal access to opportunities and amenities, if not pleasures, readily available and accessible to people around them who are enjoying higher general living standards.
Hence, a transient poor in Davao City may be considered non-poor when to be found in other areas with lower standards of living. Translating it into a real life situation, a foreigner who married a Filipina and belonged to the lowest income level in his first world country of origin may transit to a higher income category after relocating to the Philippines.
Poverty in Philippines, however, is beyond the sphere of income inequality. It is also characterized with the prevalence of chronic poor in many parts of the country particularly in the remote provinces.
Chronic poor are those who are almost resigned to being poor for the rest of their lives. These are the poor who are in “destitution,” deprived of food, water, sanitation, clothing, shelter and health care.
Almost half of the chronically poor in the Philippines are in Mindanao and more than seven of every ten chronically poor are in rural areas.
The underpinning poverty problem of the chronic poor depends not only on income but also on access to social services, security of tenure and access to land assets and human capital particularly among the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and other minorities.
In Davao City, however, access to physical assets also appears to be an urban problem as eight of the top ten poorest villages with problem on lot occupancy are urban barangays.
Yet, the top two leading barangays under this indicator are relatively rural: Pandaitan and Bago Oshiro. Of every ten households in these villages, nine are occupying lots that they do not own.
While the post-Edsa administrations have introduced major anti-poverty programs, the whole gamut of poverty-alleviation initiatives are bent towards subsidizing the food supply and increasing the income of the poor.
The bias towards palliative approach has been a major component, if not the most prevalent, since the “Tulong sa Tao” program of Pres. Cory Aquino, the Social Reform Agenda-Community Integrated Delivery of Social Services (SRA-CIDSS) of Pres. Fidel Ramos, the “Lingap para sa Mahirap” of Joseph Estrada and the Kapit Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan- Community Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) of Pres. Gloria Arroyo.
During the middle part of her tenure, Arroyo introduced the more responsive Conditional Cash Transfer-Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (CCT-4Ps) which is now being continued and expanded under the present administration of Pres. Noynoy Aquino.
While these programs have unarguably benefited the poor, there remains the need to give greater emphasis on the human and social factors that permeate poverty. In fairness to Arroyo and Aquino, the implementation of CCT-4Ps has yielded initial gains in addressing the need to invest in human capital.
Tales are abound particularly in rural villages and slum neighborhoods about parents actively encouraging their children to stay in school lest they will be disqualified from the program which offers them regular cash assistance per month.
Despite the allegations of non-existing beneficiaries and other forms of corrupt practices, the desirable results from the implementation of CCT-4Ps are a step forward in finding ways to address poverty beyond the seasonal provision of kilos of rice and cans of sardines.
It demonstrates that education and other human capital investments are far better in empowering the poor to fulfill their basic needs and dreams to prosper than reducing them as passive and helpless recipients of food commodities and other dole outs.