Against the backdrop of the global financial crisis and rising food, fuel, and commodity prices, addressing poverty and inequality in the Philippines remains a challenge. The proportion of households living below the official poverty line has declined slowly and unevenly in the past four decades, and poverty reduction has been much slower than in neighboring countries such as the People's Republic of China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Economic growth has gone through boom and bust cycles, and recent episodes of moderate economic expansion have had limited impact on the poor. Great inequality across income brackets, regions, and sectors, as well as unmanaged population growth, are considered some of the key factors constraining poverty reduction efforts. This publication analyzes the causes of poverty and recommends ways to accelerate poverty reduction and achieve more inclusive growth. it also 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.

The report is based on a multi dimensional approach to poverty following ADB's poverty reduction strategy, which defines poverty as a deprivation of essential assets. The analytical framework of the country poverty analysis blends a more traditional analysis of income poverty with an assessment of access to five different types of assets. Taken from the sustainable livelihoods approach, these assets are human, physical, natural, financial and social capital.

Poverty and (under)development are the subjects of this book. While the focus is on urban poverty, the principal themes running throughout the book apply as well to rural poverty. The book traces the roots of the Philippine-poverty problem to industrialization and spatial policies that unduly encouraged concentration of infrastructure and social services in major urban centers; to trade and macroeconomic policies that severely penalized agriculture, labor-intensive exports, and small- to medium-scale manufacturing establishments; to public spending policies that accorded little attention to human capital formation for the poor; and to the lack of strong complementarity of state and market. Taking into account economic constraints and political economy considerations, the book discusses ways on how to enhance pro-poor, pro-market, and pro-growth policies, particularly those aimed at correcting disincentives against rapid employment expansion, balanced urban-rural growth, and human capital formation.

The “leave no one behind” principle of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development requires appropriate indicators for different segments of a country’s population. This entails detailed, granular data on population groups that extend beyond national trends and averages. The Asian Development Bank, in collaboration with the Philippine Statistics Authority and the World Data Lab, conducted a feasibility study to enhance the granularity, cost-effectiveness, and compilation of high-quality poverty statistics in the Philippines. This report documents the results of the study, which capitalized on satellite imagery, geospatial data, and powerful machine learning algorithms to augment conventional data collection and sample survey techniques.

A third of poor people are disabled in the developing world. How much do we know about their livelihood with hard data? Are they entirely powerless and dependent on family members? How do they earn income? These questions have become more important than ever, now that persons with disabilities (PWDs) in developing countries have awakened to rights and entitlements and that the international community started considering the incorporation of disability into the context of poverty reduction. This book highlights opportunities and challenges faced by PWDs in the developing countries. This book also illustrates the analyses with a case study which was conducted in the Philippines and this case study has made a good progress in legislation for PWDs. A field survey was jointly conducted by the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan, and the Philippine Institute for Development Studies in Metro Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, in 2008. Around 400 PWDs were interviewed, and the data was investigated with econometrics. The book highlights a remarkable disparity in earnings and education among PWDs. The book also examines the positive role of organizations such as Disabled People’s Organizations and how empowerment of PWDs is made through dissemination of useful information such as programs given by the central and local governments. The book concludes that all measures, i.e. education, training, DPOs and institutional preferences, must be mobilized harmoniously to boost the livelihood of PWDs sinking in the bottom stratum in income.