Nathaniel M. Dagsa Jr.

PMG215 Section B
19-MPMG-038 Policy Formulation and Administration

REFLECTION PAPER
CHAPTER II

TOPIC 6 & 7 – POVERTY

The Philippines is a country located in Southeast Asia comprised of more than

7,000 islands. Poverty has proven to be one of the most significant challenges facing
this country and its citizens. Filipinos are having a hard time surviving in such difficult
conditions, and more and more are falling into extreme poverty.

According to the Asian Development Bank, the major causes of poverty include:
low economic growth, a weak agricultural sector, increased population rates and a high
volume of inequality. Because of these factors, there are a lot of effects of poverty in the
Philippines that make it difficult for people to live in such circumstances.

That poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon is no longer debatable. What

remains a contentious issue is whether the various dimensions of individual deprivation
should be aggregated--and how these are to be aggregated--into a summary measure
of poverty. It finds that what is generally known about the country’s performance in
poverty reduction in recent years, as seen in income measures of poverty, is quite
different from what the lens of multidimensional poverty measures reveal. While
income-based poverty remained largely unaffected by economic growth during the past
decade, multidimensional poverty did actually decline. From a policy perspective, this
result reinforces the view that nothing less than economic growth, even in the short
term, is required to reduce poverty. Moreover, the diversity of both deprivation intensity
and magnitude of poverty across geographic areas and sectors of the Philippine society
is enormous, suggesting that, beyond growth, much needs to be done to make
development more inclusive.

TOPIC 8 & 9 – CRIME IN THE PHILIPPINES

(see Narrative Report)

Page 1 of 1