Examining Chronic and Transient Poverty Using the Community-Based Monitoring System System (CBMS) Data

With poverty reduction as the government’s primary goal, monitoring the poverty situation of households is deemed necessary. In the Philippines, several local government units (LGUs) have adopted the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) as a local poverty-monitoring tool. This study used the constructed CBMS panel data for the municipality of Orion in Bataan province consisting of 4,299 panel households (for the period 2006, 2009, and 2012) to identify chronic and transient poor households

Analysis of the Impact of the Changes in the Prices of Rice and Fuel on Poverty in the Philippines

In 2008, prices of rice and fuel in the Philippines have dramatically increased following the trends in the global market. Although the movements in the farmgate (producer) and retail (consumer) prices of rice is fairly stable during the period January 2006 to December 2007, prices significantly increased starting January 2008 (Figure 1). The average retail prices of rice for the period January to September 2008, in fact, increased by 34.3 percent as compared to 3.7 percent growth in the previous year. Meanwhile, farmgate prices increased by 26.7 percent in January to September 2008 as compared to the previous year’s growth of only 4.5 percent. During the period, price of rice was at its highest in June 2008 with farmgate and retail prices of ordinary rice at P27.98 per kilogram and P35.78 per kilogram, respectivel

Economic Violence and its Associated Factors on Filipina Women: Evidence from the 2013 and 2017 Philippines National Demographic and Health Survey

Economic violence is referred to as any act that controls a victim’s ability to acquire, use, and gain resources, which threatens the victim’s economic security. This type of violence against women has largely been neglected in most literature, despite intimate partner violence being one of the more pervasive social problems globally. Most empirical studies focus on physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, or a combination of these, necessitating the study of economic violence, particularly in low- and middle-income nations such as the Philippines.High-income countries showed a lower lifetime prevalence of economic violence given that these countries have better-developed protective laws, and economic ability and rights for women. Although other studies like Antai et al. (2014), Yount et al. (2016), Adams et al. (2015), and Asencios-Gonzales (2018) looked into the association between economic violence and other demographic and socioeconomic characteristics in a year and did not consider husband/partner’s alcohol consumption, we examine numerous factors that are associated with the occurrence of economic violence to women in the Philippines between two time periods. In the National Demographic and Health Surveys, the binary logistic regression model was applied to pooled cross-sectional weighted data from women aged 15 to 49 years old in the Philippines, in 2013 and 2017. The analysis of this study only includes weighted observations of women who are currently in a union. Results showed that economic violence is strongly associated with other forms of violence—physical, emotional, and sexual violence. Measures of socioeconomic inequalities and other explanatory variables have shown that having more children, lower educational attainment, and having a husband who drinks alcohol were significantly associated with increasing the odds of experiencing economic violence. This suggests that there is a need to address the factors that contribute to economic violence to put a stop to the prevalence of economic abuse against women in the Philippines

Can the Philippines Achieve its CO2 Reduction Commitment with Renewable Energy?

The Philippines always aims to achieve economic growth, which requires expanding economic activities, resulting in increased pollution (Stern, 2017). The country signified its intention to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 75% in COP26 (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], 2021). Part of its strategy to combat CO2 emissions is by increasing its share of renewable energy (RE) sources to at least 35% of the total energy matrix (Department of Energy [DOE], 2021). The Philippines’ ability to reach its COP26 commitment through a scenario approach on the effects of increasing GDP and share of RE to CO2 emissions using Kaya Identity and EKC was investigated. Geometric growth and target-oriented forecasting were performed to generate the forecast period. The Kaya Identity computed the total factor CO2 emissions of the country. The EKC investigated whether increases in GDP, incorporated with the share of RE, result in declining CO2 emissions. Results showed that in scenarios 5 to 7, where GDP and share of RE are increasing based on targets, the Philippines enters post-industrialization stage 3 of environmental responsibility, wherein increases in GDP result in declining CO2 emissions. Evidence suggests the Philippines must remain aggressive in its RE investments to reach its COP26 carbon dioxide emissions reduction commitment

Path Towards Energy Sustainability: AMultidimensional Analysis of EnergyPoverty in Philippine Households

Measuring energy poverty to meet one’s basic needs is vital for household assessments concerning accessibility of energy, affordability of energy prices, usage of energy resources, and sufficiency of energy consumption. In this Policy Brief, we have listed recommendations and rationale to improve the energy conditions of Philippine households

Small Fishes, Sharp Hooks: Obstacles to Economic Freedom Affecting Micro Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Southeast Asian Countries

Obstacles to economic freedom such as trade obstacles, finance obstacles, taxes, and corruption affect the ability of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to maximize firm performance. This policy brief is based on the observations made regarding the relationship of these obstacles to economic freedom in Southeast Asian countries Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. This will take into account the recent economic environment of each country

International migration and poverty in the Philippines: Insights from the household-level data obtained through the community-based monitoring system

International migration has been an important economic strategy of many Filipino households. Records show that a significant number of Filipinos work abroad and send remittances to their families back home. Using household-level data obtained by selected local government units (LGUs) in the Philippines through the community-based monitoring system (CBMS), this study aims to examine international migration and its impact on poverty. To address the endogeneity of migration decision, the impact on poverty is estimated using the instrumental variables method. Results showed that international migration led to an increase per capita income of households, thereby resulting in a reduction in poverty, in general. At the same time, poverty as measured by the CBMS simple composite index (SCI) and multidimensional poverty index (MPI) declined because of international migration

Impact on OFWs [Overseas Filipino Workers], remittances and local employment seen in the Philippines : CBMS Network's multi-country study on monitoring and mitigating the impact on poverty of the global financial and economic crisis

This paper presents the results of Community-based Monitoring Systems (CBMS) surveys for nine selected sites distributed over the Philippines. The sites serve as poverty observatories or sentinel sites for monitoring the impact of the global financial and economic crisis. Monitoring is done primarily through CBMS surveys of household and community-level data, which capture the different dimensions of poverty. The CBMS Network project monitors the impact of the global financial crisis on poverty in developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America. It is noted that coping strategies adopted by households may have negative long-term consequences, especially on women and children