NEARLY every Filipino learns this unique custom at a very early age, even before he or she can walk or talk properly: performing the “Mano po” gesture. Even a child who is still being breastfed knows that an older person’s hand being extended, with the palm down, is to be taken and gently pressed to the forehead as a sign of respect.
There is no other culture that follows this custom, and it is an integral part of Philippine society that we have taken for granted. This gesture may be imitated, but it is not exactly duplicated by bowing or hand-kissing in any place in the world. While it may have originated from colonial-era Spaniards as a sign of subservience, Filipinos have long adopted it as their own.
This gesture goes far beyond impressing your neighbors on how smart your child is to have learned it at an early age. It is an integral part of the culture and has greater implications. A person could offer a pseudo-intellectual argument on how this is an unnecessary throwback to an earlier age. But this gesture is part of a greater cultural phenomenon.
The well-educated and, perhaps, wealthy young man is expected to show respect for the elderly woman who runs the sari-sari store, regardless of social or economic position. Being a part of a Filipino’s life at a very early age, the mano po affects our behavior, even if we do not understand exactly how.
What is uniquely Filipino, in part, determines the future of the Philippines.
The Philippines is also absolutely unique in the world by having an increasing number of working-age people, which is considered a demographic “sweet spot”. But what does this mean in an economic sense?
In the coming decades, the majority of Filipinos will be in the working-age group. Our labor force will grow by 31 percent in 2020. In contrast, Japan’s will decrease by 4 percent. China’s will begin decreasing in 2020. Thailand’s labor force will grow by 8 percent; Indonesia’s, by 11 percent; and Malaysia’s, by 18 percent.
The Philippines’s working-age population will peak in 2077, while China and South Korea’s will peak in 2016 and 2015, respectively.
The truth is, young and old people alike are a drain on the economy. It is called “economic dependence”. This means that they are taking from, but not contributing to, the economy. In 1980 the youth-dependency rate in the Philippines was 80 percent; in 2010 it was 58 percent. By 2020 the old-age dependency rate will be a scant 5.9 percent. For Japan, 36 percent of its population will be too old to work by 2020.
We can argue that an increasing age sweet spot will create more problems in finding enough jobs. But, historically, jobs only emerged in countries when their sweet-spot demographic grew, and left as the population peaked.
From capitalistexploits.at: “Consider that, in 1990, the combined GDP [gross domestic product] of the G-7 [Group of Seven] countries stood at $14.4 trillion. At the same time, the ‘emerging 7’ [China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and South Korea] sported a GDP of $2.3 trillion. Last year the figures stood at $32 trillion for the G-7 and $35 trillion for the emerging 7.”
Jobs and economic wealth were lost in developed nations and seemed to shift to emerging nations.
Another thing to consider about our changing age demographic is that, between 1990 and 2010, the younger-than-15 age group fell from 42 percent to 33 percent. During the same period, the core economic group—the 35-to-49 age group—increased by 37 percent. In other words, the latter age group is growing fast, while the former is growing smaller, and it will be 20 years before there is any significant increase in the so-called elderly
dependent group.
Again, from capitalistexploits.at: “There are massive global shifts that are taking place right in front of us. What this looks like in 10, 20 years time is a factor of that which it is today. Within 15 years the Asian middle class alone will make up over two-thirds of the global middle class. Today it is one-third.”
The Philippines’s sweet spot may put the country near the top of this economic shift.
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