Poverty in the Philippines: Causes, Constraints, and Opportunities comprehensively analyzes the causes of poverty and recommends ways to accelerate poverty reduction and achieve more inclusive growth. The report provides an overview of current government responses, strategies, and achievements in the fight against poverty and identifies and prioritizes future needs and interventions. The analysis is based on current literature and the latest available data, including the 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey.
Other cause
The incomplete land reform aiming at overthrowing the traditionally unequal agrarian society coupled with lack of support for farmers has been a long-lasting flaw in the governments’ development policies that can still massively reduce poverty in the Philippines.
Thus, the role of the state remains central to redistribute more equally the wealth created in the country, in order to avoid leaving the poor behind. Supporting the extremely poor must be seen as a long-term investment and counterbalanced with future gains.
However, mistrust in the government combined with corruption and/or incompetence makes the overall task much harder, even though it has led to the rise of militant movements that speak in favor of farmers to build fairer trade systems.
In a strange way, another problem for the Philippines is that, in spite of having embraced liberalization and international organizations’ rules, they have now ended up less integrated in the world economy than other Asian countries.
For instance, import tariff on rice makes it one of the rare exceptions in WTO, although understandable when you see how important rice is to the livelihood of millions of Filipinos. However, recent research on food price increase has