Poverty

POVERTY

Poverty has always remained to be one of the major problems of our society. In fact, even before the colonization here of the foreign people, it already manifested.  You might be wondering, that despite of the fact that we have a pool of talented individuals in the country, still some of them suffering from poverty. According to the saying of the richest person in the world and the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, “If you are born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor, it’s your mistake.”  From the same statement, we say that he is correct. Knowing that, our destiny relies on how well we manage to improve our lives to feel the peace, joy and contentment.

Anyway, what is meant by poverty? According to the World Bank, “Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.”

On the other hand, United Nations says that poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.”

By those definitions, it simply means that poverty is the lack of basic human needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter, because of the inability to afford them. It’s hard to imagine, that until now, some people are still poor despite of their likeliness to get out of the box. So, then what is the main problem? What are the roots that allows this to happen? Whatever the meaning of the poverty maybe, the presence of it in our society really affects us.

ABOUT POVERTY AND ISSUES

The documentary series of iWitness entitled “Kalam”, “Uhaw”, “Silong” and “Saplot basically tackles the most basic human needs – food, water, shelter and clothing respectively. These were done by immersing with individuals and communities with no access to these bare essentials. From here we can say that it is very obvious that there are really people who are having hard time living, observe that some of them composed of more than 5 family members! The point is, knowing that they are already poor in their state of living, they didn’t plan well for their future. It is commonly noticed that, rich people have only one child but when you look at poor people, they have three or more.

In the recent survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), it says that 16.5% of the families were poor in 2015, on which it is about 3.8 million Filipino families. And a Filipino as it says, in order to meet both basic food and non-food needs, each need at least P 1,813.00 on a monthly average. So, in a common family of 5 members, they need at least P 9,064.00. These figures presented are called poverty threshold. This pertains to the minimum income required for a family to meet the basic food and non-food requirements, which is also called poverty line. So, does this means that if an individual earns more that the poverty threshold they are not considered as poor?

On another documentary by Jay Taruc, “Pira Pirasong Piso”, it showed and emphasized on how we define the meaning of poverty in our present time, how a Filipino can survive a day with the limited amount of resources (money).

In this documentary, Jay Taruc selected two subjects, Ronaldo, who sells fruits in front of their house, has no stable job to support her wife who’s working as saleslady in Divisoria and the other one is Delma, who goes door to door selling beauty products while her husband is an ice-cream vendor. These two subjects are considered as non-poor, since their incomes in a month are above the poverty threshold so they are not considered as poor.

In a day, if you would calculate, the average budget for the day for a family of five is 302.00, based on the poverty threshold. Will it be enough to sustain the needs of the family? How about the other needs such as lighting, education, medical services and etc.?   That won’t be enough!

Table 1. The following is an example of budget expense for the day.

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        Take note of the example above, if you have a budget of 302.00 pesos a day then only 13.00 will be left, which is not enough to cover the other daily expenses such as fuel, water, shelter, clothing and etc..

        So how about those who are in the line of poorest of the poor? Based on the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) press release on the country’s official poverty statistics for the full year of 2015.  The PSA report provides the estimates of poverty incidence using income data from the first and second visit of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) conducted in July 2015 and January 2016, respectively. Poverty incidence among Filipinos in 2015 was estimated at 21.6 percent.  During the same period in 2012, poverty incidence among Filipinos was recorded at 25.2 percent

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INSIGHTS ABOUT THE ISSUES

        The main cause of poverty in our country is rooted to corruption, a problem seemed to have no end. Because of these corruptions, funds are getting short for health, education, agriculture and important matters 3.

        Education on the other hand, which is a basic factor for economic development. It plays a vital role in social mobility, equity, public health, better opportunities for employment and etc. In the Philippine setting based on the Poverty Assessment by the World Bank (2001), it showed clearly that the educational attainment of the head of the household implies as the major contributor to the observed variation in household welfare.