Philippine diaspora widens poverty gap

Friday, February 16, 2007

Billions of dollars in remittances by its huge overseas work force are lifting many areas of the Philippines out of poverty but millions more are being left behind, according to a study obtained by Agence France-Presse Thursday. Manila and five other regions that account for most of the labor exports also have the country’s lowest poverty levels, and five of these areas showed significant drops in poverty levels between 2000 and 2003, said the paper by University of Santo Tomas professor Alvin Ang. However, poverty levels increased to between 34 percent and 49 percent in regions where labor export is not a principal preoccupation, the study said, citing government data. Poor stay home The government estimates 30 percent of the Philippines population are poor. But World Bank data show nearly 40 percent of Filipinos live on $2 a day or less. Ang’s paper said the results support the hypothesis “that those who are migrating and working abroad are not poor” and that the remittances, which reached a record $10.7 billion in 2005, “have multiplier effects in terms of education, health, housing, [and] entrepreneurship” among others. However, “instead of leveling the regional poverty levels, it probably contributes to its worsening” in areas where workers do not have the proper skills as well as the resources to move overseas. The Philippines started large-scale exports of construction workers and seamen in the 1970s amid a building boom in the oil-soaked Middle East. Ang said deployments shifted in favor of lower-skilled service workers, including domestics, with the emergence of the so-called tiger economies of Asia by the late 1980s. Worsening inequality Since the 1990s, the information technology revolution and the graying populations of much of the developed world opened up job opportunities for highly skilled Filipino professionals and technical workers. --AFP.

 

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/feb/16/yehey/top_stories/20070216top6.html