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SO the
Philippines is a Christian and democratic country, but
in ensuring its people a life at decent levels, why is
it lagging behind many other Asian—not one a Christian
and a number not democratic—nations?
This may
be gleaned from the Asian Development Bank’s Social
Protection Index (SPI), a rating system the bank
developed. The results of its initial application has
highlighted the need for the Philippines to double its
efforts in providing social protection for its citizens.
The
index is a new tool for assessing the extent to which
Asian and Pacific countries provide welfare,
labor-market, social-security, health-insurance,
microcredit, child-protection, targeted-education and
health-support programs to their citizens, especially
those living below the poverty line.
The SPI
can be used by governments and international agencies to
assess and compare the social-protection efforts of
countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and become
aware of where a particular country may not be doing
enough for its people.
The SPI
showed the Philippines’ index value—on a scale of 0 to
1—was only 0.21 while the Asian average was 0.36. The
country ranked 22nd among 33 countries that participated
in the development of the SPI.
The
final SPI score was averaged from the results of the
countries’ performance on social-protection coverage,
expenditure, distribution or poverty targetting and
impact.
On its
performance on social-protection coverage, the
Philippines scored 0.33; and 0.22 in government
spending on social protection vis-à-vis its gross
domestic product (GDP); 0.30 in the extent policies and
programs reach the target population; and 0.05 in the
beneficial effect of social protection measures on an
individual’s income.
Axel
Weber, one of the three authors of the book Social
Protection Index for Committed Poverty Reduction,
said that in the case of the Philippines, increasing
social protection coverage could target the 30 percent
of Filipinos not covered by PhilHealth; and noted the
Social Security System (SSS) also does not cover a large
part of the informal sector.
“The
Philippines needs to work on extending coverage. There
should be a focus on the quality and depth of the
coverage,” said Weber at a briefing in
Pasig City
on Wednesday.
ADB vice
president Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, also at the briefing,
said the score of the Philippines, like many of its
Asian neighbors, reflects the two sides of
Asia—“high growth and high inequality.”
Schaefer-Preuss said even with PhilHealth and the SSS
already established, social-protection coverage remains
unsatisfactory because the performance of these agencies
are below average, as indicated by the country’s scores
on the four SPI indicators.
“We
recognize that despite the impressive economic records,
there are still too many people in our region not
benefitting from the fruits of growth,” she said.
“Here in
the
Philippines, the
study shows that despite the fact that the country is
quite advanced with its social- protection instruments
like the SSS and PhilHealth, its performance is below
the Asian average. The index of the
Philippines
is 0.21 on a scale between 0 and 1, the Asian average is
0.36. And this is in spite of the fact that the
Philippines is on the way to be a middle-income
country,” she added.
Overall,
the ADB said that attaining a high score in the index
does not mean a country needs to be wealthy, but that
even poor countries can afford basic social protection
like financing health care, cash transfers to the poor
and elderly and child protection.
“While
social protection is growing in importance in the fight
against poverty and in meeting the Millennium
Development Goals, there have been very few attempts to
systematically quantify the overall impact of
social-protection activities in terms of expenditure,
beneficiaries or the impact of the programs. The SPI was
created to fill this void,” said the ADB in a statement.
The bank
said that even if
Japan
and South Korea topped the list, countries considered
relatively wealthy didn’t always score higher than
poorer neighbors.
While
India and Pakistan have similar levels of per capita
GDP, they score very differently on the SPI. India rates
a 0.46 while Pakistan is at 0.07.
On
average, countries in the region spend just under 5
percent of their GDP on social protection and achieve an
overall average coverage level of 35 percent of key
target groups, which include the unemployed, elderly,
poor, and disabled. |
