Poverty

Poverty

Phillipines VS Canada

I have conducted extensive research on the needs of the country in question. Throughout the course of my research it has become clear that there can be many trends in the data and statistics of economic concerns of many countries. In order to better illustrate my point I have chosen to compare two different countries while observing one economic concern. I have decided to illustrate the concern of poverty in the economy of the Philippines and Canada.

The Philippines is a country that has been destroyed by widespread poverty. The economic concerns in this country have multiplied in the past decade. There are many causes to the many problems and not enough effective reforms to rectify them. They currently have a population of 88 million people, and it is expanding rapidly. An increasing population with out enough jobs to sustain them increases the poverty level. In this country's case, the population growth was the major contributor to their high poverty level. We need to also take into account the location of this country and the natural disasters that they encounter. There are 22 active volcanoes in the Philippines and 88 inactive ones. Just this year, there have been seven earthquakes or predicted earthquakes. They constantly have landslide and tsunamis, and on the average, they are affected by 15 major storms a year. They are normally hit with al least 5 or 6 of them. With all these problems affecting their agriculture, their struggle to decrease their poverty levels and improve their way of life is a constant challenge. 77.4% of the country's GDP is public debt. The 2000 Philippine Human Development Report says that even though their economy is inactive, they are doing very well. Even though nearly half of the country is below poverty level, 64 of the 77 provinces are considered to be in the medium human development category of the HDI (Human Development index). The high crime and drug rates, the low education rates, the lack of knowledge of technological advancement, and the poor living conditions also play a large role in the high poverty level.

Table 1Poverty incidence in selected Asian countries1(percent)

Years Annualreduction Firstyear Lastyear

PhilippinesIndonesiaKoreaMalaysiaThailand 1971-941970-901970-901973-871962-88 0.72.00.91.61.4 5258233759 361951422

Sources: World Bank, 1996, and Philippines, National Statistical Coordination Board, 1996. 1Defined as proportion of families living below the poverty line.

A lot has been done to benefit the situation in the Philippines; however, few changes have actually been made. Industry is highly monopolized. Mismanagement caused the land to be unequally distributed. Reforms that were made had little progress. Income was highly monopolized as well. The 10% of the rich population got richer. There was a small attempt to redistribute the money, but the only people who seemed to benefit from this were the middle class. President Aquino made an effort to destroy the monopolies, boost the economy, and create more jobs for the lower class. She was only able to bust down the state protected monopolies and because her efforts failed, poverty continued to weigh heavily on the Philippines. Table 1 shows the slow rate in which the poverty level has improved in the past years. This can mainly be blamed on the attempts of reforms that have failed. At one point they pursued an industrial policy that focused on imports rather than exports. Tariff policies hurt the economy. The constantly changing exchange rate for the peso also hurts their economy. Education in the Philippines is highly under funded. Also, their spending is focused on the primary learning grades rather then secondary, where dropout rate is much higher. There have also been several attempts to revise their tax policy, however, there is no real way to redistribute the income that way. While the poverty in the Philippines is a major concern, there are attempts being made to rectify