THE full implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health (RPRH) law could bring down poverty rate to single and digit levels within President Duterte’s term, according to the National Economic Development Authority (Neda).
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia told reporters that the RPRH law remains the “cheapest” means to address poverty in the country.
In a draft executive order (EO) to be presented in the next Cabinet meeting, Pernia said the Commission on Population (Popcom) estimates the country’s poverty rate could be brought down to 9 percent in the medium term.
“If we just fully implement the law, we can bring down [poverty to single digits] within the term of the President. [This means] all LGUs [local government units] will be implementing [the law and] not just certain regions. We need an EO for that,” Pernia said.
He added the Popcom estimated the country’s current poverty incidence is around 19 percent, lower than the 21.6 percent estimated by the Philippine Statistics Authority in 2015.
Being able to bring down poverty incidence to below 10 percent will not be a major boost in the government’s target of a 14-percent poverty rate by 2022 under the Philippine Development Plan.
A staunch supporter of the RPRH law even before he was appointed as socioeconomic planning secretary, Pernia believed one of the major reasons for high poverty incidence is the high number of children of poor families.
Pernia noted many couples prefer to have only three children, but end up having five or six, doubling their desired number of offsprings.
“Reducing poverty [through a] family-planning program is the cheapest way of reducing poverty. Its harder to reduce poverty by just macroeconomic growth,” he said.
“It has really to be targeted, focused on the poor families who are having more children than they can afford to provide health services and tuition for,” he added.
Last year Pernia said the RPRH law will allow the government to reach its goal of slowing the country’s population growth rate.
The Philippines’s population growth rate is around 1.7 percent. This means that if there are 104 million Filipinos, another 1.6 million will be added every year.
But with the RPRH law, the population growth rate can slow to only 1.4 percent a year by 2022.
While the government refuses to impose a policy on the number of children similar to the one-child policy of China, Pernia said the government encourages couples to have the number of children they can support and raise.
In 2008 Pernia led 27 University of the Philippines professors in a united stand in support of the reproductive- health bill.
In that position paper, the professors said poor families are especially burdened when they end up with more children than they desire.
The authors added larger families make less investments per child, decreasing the chances of breaking the chain of intergenerational poverty.