The Duterte administration could reduce poverty incidence to as much as 15 percent with the full implementation of the Responsible Parenthood Reproductive Health (RPRH) law, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and Neda Director General Ernesto M. Pernia recently told reporters that the implementation of the RPRH law is crucial in the country’s fight against poverty. Based on the 2015 Poverty Statistics, the country’s poverty incidence rate is at 21.6 percent. This was lower than the 25.2 percent recorded in 2012.
“We’re considering a target of poverty incidence of 20 percent to 15 percent by 2022. [This takes into consideration the] full implementation of RPRH and [a GDP] growth rate of around 7 percent,” Pernia said.
He added that if the RPRH law is fully implemented, the government can help mothers limit the number of their children to the desired number of three.
In terms of poverty reduction, making this happen for the poorest 20 percent of women, poverty incidence could already decline by 1.5 percentage points in just one year.
Pernia said that if the poorest 40 percent of women are able to bring down the number of their children to three, poverty rate could be cut by nearly 3 percentage points.
“Even by just doing that [full implementation of the RPRH], it can already be shown that if we enable the poor couples or poor households to achieve their desired family size, which is always fewer or smaller than the actual, then it will already, by itself, reduce poverty,” he said.
“It’s a very simple calculation, we just assume that the smaller desired family or smaller number of children desired by many or most poor couples would already bring down poverty incidence by itself without even talking about the dynamic between economic growth and the RPRH law effect,” Pernia added.
In terms of population growth, Pernia said the full implementation of the RPRH law could help prevent the country’s population from reaching 106 million by 2018.
The estimate of 106 million is based on 2014 projections. However, Pernia said that, with the RPRH law, the number of Filipinos by 2018 could reach only 103 million.
Based on the 2015 Census of Population and Housing, there are 100.98 million Filipinos. The most populous regions are Calabarzon and the National Capital Region (NCR), with populations of 14.41 million and 12.88 million, respectively. While having a high population is one of the conditions the country must meet to reap the so-called demographic dividend, it is not the only factor that should be considered.
Prior to his appointment as Neda chief, Pernia told the BusinessMirror in January that a demographic dividend is reaped when the working age population is growing faster than the number of dependents.
Pernia said the demographic transition is the period when the country’s total fertility rate drops to a stable replace rate or 2 percent.
In a few years after the country enters the demographic transition, it will already start reaping the demographic dividend. Pernia said this can take as long as 50 years.
His predecessor Arsenio M. Balisacan, who is now the country’s antitrust chief, said countries in East Asia like Thailand, which entered the demographic transition in the mid-1990s, are still reaping the demographic dividend.