ABI Orange Book 2015

125 themselves Mahirap or Poor. This is 2 points above the 53% that considered themselves Poor (about 11.5 million) in March 2014 and 3 points above the 52% average for the four quarters of 2013. Interestingly, the same survey also found that 16.3%, or about 3.6 million families, experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months. This is 1.5 points below the 17.8% (about 3.9 million families) in March 2014, and 3.2 points below the 19.5% annual average of 2013. The Hunger rate was falling among the Poor, Food Poor and Non-Food Poor but it was rising among the Non-Poor.

The above underscores the complexity of the issue of poverty, that there is not one portrait of poverty. Families can move in and out of poverty even if for most, poverty is their steady state.

This, the 4Ps simplifies.

Impact on education The 4Ps also does not sufficiently address the known problems in the education sector. This statement from our report last year on the DSWD’s 2014 budget bears repeating: “While the report (Chaudhury, et. al.) cites the program for helping to keep children, 3-11 years old, in school, it ‘did not find evidence that Pantawid Pamilya fostered greater enrollment of poor children in primary school at the appropriate age, nor was there an observable impact on transition rates from primary to secondary school’. Instead, it said that while enrolling children at the appropriate age (6 years old is the official start of grade 1) is important for children to have a fair chance of age-appropriate progression in school - the study found no evidence that more poor children in the Pantawid barangays were being enrolled in primary school at age 6.”

Indeed, based on the Department of Education’s own report, in School Year 2012-2013, the participation rate in kindergarten was still at 77.4%. Meanwhile, the elementary school cohort survival and completion rates of 75.3% and 73.7%, respectively, is just back to where they were in School Year 2008-2009 after having dropped 2 percentage points in the intervening years.

Again as stated in our report last year, Chaudhury, et. al. noted well that children continued to drop out of school although “the age at which children dropped out of school started at 10 years old in non-Pantawid barangays and 11 years old in Pantawid barangays . . . The level of school enrolment for children in Pantawid barangays was statistically significantly higher than in nonPantawid barangays until age 11, after which children started dropping out at a similar pace with children in the non-Pantawid barangays. At age 15, children in program areas had a higher rate of dropout than those in the control areas, probably due to the cut-off age of the program’s education grant.”

Impact on maternal and reproductive health It is on antenatal care where the 4Ps has had a big impact. The increased number of visits to health centers is regarded as a primary contributor to the Philippines’ meeting the MDG target on reducing child mortality. The maternal mortality ratio however has not been stemmed with the number of maternal deaths increasing from 209 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 221 in 2011. In 2010, the Department of Health reported that 35.2% of such deaths occurred because of Paggugol na Matuwid: Kaunlaran para sa Naiwan