Manalo, Cristian James P.

March 01, 2021

BSA 2-11 Economic Development

The Philippine government's Pantawid Pamilyang Program is derived from the Conditional
Cash Transfer program, which is the mother program. The least fortunate is granted the chance
to obtain federal cash aid by this scheme. As a consequence, this initiative can be tracked back
to Latin America, where the World Bank supports developing countries and women. “Assistance
to disadvantaged people, typically in the form of currency, based on stated behaviors, most
commonly related to education and healthcare,” according to the World Bank, which supports and
funds CCTs around the world. CCTs, which deviate from conventional social security programs,
foster wealth accumulation and fight both short- and long-term poverty cycles. CCTs, in
comparison to conventional social welfare programs that only resolve short-term poverty
alleviation, encourage wealth growth and fight both the short- and long-term periods of poverty”,
this is in accordance with the take of Centofante in this topic.
Since 2007, when the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) unveiled
it as a full-scale cash transfer scheme, the 4Ps or Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Initiative has
become a helping hand to many vulnerable Filipino households. With the signing of the
Implementing Rules and Regulations, the program's institutionalization, which involves a whole-
government solution, is now feasible (IRR). Republic Act 11310, or "An Act institutionalizing the
4Ps," was signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte on December 19 and became effective
in April 2019.
The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is a national government human welfare
measure that offers conditional cash grants to the poorest of the poor to improve their health,
nutrition, and education, according to the official gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. It's
focused on Latin American conditional cash conversion (CCT) systems. It is modeled after the
conditional cash transfer (CCT) systems that have brought millions of people out of poverty in
Latin American and African countries.
The 4Ps has dual objectives as the flagship poverty alleviation program of the Aquino
administration: social assistance, giving monetary support to extremely poor families to respond
to their immediate needs; and social development, breaking the intergenerational poverty cycle
by investing in the health and education of poor children through programs such as health check-
ups for pregnant women and children aged 0 to 5; deworming of schoolchildren aged 6 to 14;
enrollment of children in daycare, elementary, and secondary schools; and family development
sessions.
The 4Ps also helps the Philippine government fulfill its commitment to the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs)—specifically in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, in
achieving universal primary education, in promoting gender equality, in reducing child mortality,
and in improving maternal health care.
The 4Ps operates in all the 17 regions in the Philippines, covering 79 provinces, 143 cities,
and 1,484 municipalities. Beneficiaries are selected through the National Household Targeting
System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), which identifies who and where the poor are in the
country.
In general, the following criteria must be satisfied to become eligible for the program:
Residents of the poorest municipalities, based on 2003 Small Area Estimates (SAE) of the
National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) Households whose economic condition is equal
to or below the provincial poverty threshold Households that have children 0-18 years old and/or
have a pregnant woman at the time of assessment Households that agree to meet conditions
specified in the program.
Moreover, the 4Ps has two types of cash grants that are given out to household-
beneficiaries: health grant: P500 per household every month, or a total of P6,000 every year
education grant: P300 per child every month for ten months, or a total of P3,000 every year (a
household may register a maximum of three children for the program) For a household with three
children, a household may receive P1,400 every month, or a total of P15,000 every year for five
years, from the two types of cash grants given to them. These cash grants are distributed to the
household-beneficiaries through the Land Bank of the Philippines or, if not feasible, through
alternate payment schemes such as Globe G-Cash remittance and rural bank transactions.
As of August 2015, a total of P27.15 billion cash grants were paid to eligible and compliant
beneficiaries for the first to the third period of 2015 covering January to August disbursements.
From this amount, P13.23 billion was paid for education, and the remaining P13.92 billion was
disbursed for health. In order to receive the above-mentioned subsidies, all the succeeding
conditions must be met by the household-beneficiaries:
a) Pregnant women must avail pre- and post-natal care, and be attended during childbirth
by a trained professional;
b) Parents or guardians must attend the family development sessions, which include
topics on responsible parenting, health, and nutrition;
c) Children aged 0-5 must receive regular preventive health check-ups and vaccines;
d) Children aged 6-14 must receive deworming pills twice a year; and
e) Children-beneficiaries aged 3-18 must enroll in school, and maintain an attendance of
at least 85% of class days every month.
Thus, with this perspective of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program of the Republic of
the Philippines, the researchers are hoping to find a suitable effectiveness of the 4P’s to the quality
of life of the Barangays in Toril, Davao City.
The significance of the Study The findings of this study will benefit the following:
The 4P’s beneficiaries of the Barangays in Toril. The findings will help boost the morale
and life of the 4P’s beneficiary since they will find out the effect of 4P’s to their life. They will also
be able to understand the importance of 4Ps not only in their financial endeavors but above all to
their relationships with their family and community.
The Barangays in Toril. The result will give the barangay officials and other barangay
functionaries a broader perspective of the effect of 4P’s to the quality of life of their people. The
Davao Central Colleges. The result of the study will be beneficial to the school since there re
some students who are under the 4P’s who are studying in the school. In this way, the school will
be able to give proper approaches to these students in order to improve their quality of life.
 The Faculty of Davao Central Colleges. The result of the study will help the faculty
members of the school to be guided on how to approach and improve the quality of life of their
students who are under the 4P’s.
The Students of Davao Central Colleges. The result of the study will be beneficial to the
students of DCC since this will tackle the importance of their studies, as one of the reasons why
4P’s was established. This will allow students to realize how fortunate they are.
The Future researchers. The future researcher can make use of the data gathered to even
enhance or create new studies on the effect of 4P’s to the quality of life of its beneficiaries in
barangays of Toril.
Objectives of the Study
The following are the objectives of the studies:
a) To know what barangays in Toril have 4P’s beneficiaries and how many are they.
b) To know what quality of life the 4P’s beneficiaries have before and after they became
recipients of the program
c) To know what were the major changes that had happened in the life of the recipients
as they became beneficiaries of the program.
d) To know what effects does the program gave to the students who are under it.
e) To know whether the program is indeed beneficial in all aspect of the life of the
beneficiaries.
Scope and Delimitation
The study is limited to a number of barangays in Toril. These barangays are chosen base
on the number of 4P’s beneficiaries they have. On the other hand, the study is only limited to the
4P’s beneficiaries, especially those who have their children study in DCC. The study, on the one
hand, is also limited to the quality of life of the beneficiaries which covers on and while they are
still the recipient of the said program. Hence, with this scope and limitation of the study, the
researchers are hoping to find out the effectiveness of the 4P’s to the quality of life of its
beneficiaries in some barangays in Toril, Davao City.
Conceptual Framework
In this study, the researchers will be using a quantitative-descriptive form of research with
the use of data analysis implied by the data gathered from the barangays. The researchers will
also employ an interview and questionnaire, as a way of data gathering, particularly to the
recipient of the program. This paradigm will help us understand the framework of the researchers:
Definition of Term
4P’s – It is known as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program of the government of the
Philippines. The other name for this is a conditional cash transfer program (CCT program). This
is a program of the government that gives financial assistance to the less fortunate.
Barangays – It is a type of early Filipino settlement; the word is derived from balangay,
the name for the sailboats that originally brought settlers of Malay stock to the Philippines from
Borneo. Barangay villages sometimes grew to include 30 to 100 families, but the barangays
remained isolated from one another.
The Spaniards retained the barangay as their basic unit of local administration in the
islands. (Ultimate Encyclopedia) Quality of Life - It is the prospect of rising living standards that
make the acquisition of competence in terms of standard of living. But however desirable the
possession of a comfortable sufficiency of material goods, and the possibility of leisure for
recreational purposes, the quality of a full life in any human society has other even more important
prerequisites, such as the possession of freedom in a law-abiding community and of equality
before the law. (Ultimate Encyclopedia) Recipient / Beneficiaries – A person, group or community
what receive help from an organization or individual, may it be in a form of monetary subsidy or
material help. (Ultimate Encyclopedia) Effectiveness – It stresses the actual production of or the
power to produce. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Poverty has a negative effect on the economy, allowing other concerns to emerge, and it
has an especially negative impact on the youth. Children born into disadvantaged families are
more likely to have insufficient schooling and poor health, which has a direct effect on their growth
and development. And, as the future human labour force, the government feels the need to invest
in them in order to ensure the strength of the human capital. That is why the government is
addressing the uncontrollable increase in poverty rates by concentrating on children and
introducing programs that will benefit every Filipino household. The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino
Campaign, which focuses on the poorest of the poor, stresses the actual plight of the country to
be tackled, is one of these suggested alternatives.
Over the years, the Philippines has continued to fight chronic poverty, yearning and
struggling to break away from an unjust situation. Every Filipino's day-to-day period, especially in
the disadvantaged field, involves a struggle for survival. As a part of this, the country's human
resource expenditure suffers as suffering remains. In search here are the questions: “Is 4P’s
Program really effective? What are its advantages and disadvantages? Will this be finally the
answer to the issue of extreme poverty in the country?”, these are things this reflective essay will
try to answer.
Before starting, is 4Ps? According to the World Bank in 2014, the Pantawid Pamilyang
Pilipino Program provides cash transfers to poor households, conditional upon investments in
child education and health as well as use of maternal health services. The objective of the
program is to promote investments in the education and health of children to help break the
intergenerational transmission of poverty, while providing immediate financial support to the
household.
A Conditional Cash Transfer Program is a program implemented by the government where
money (cash grants) is given to eligible beneficiaries given that these beneficiaries comply with
certain conditions such as nutrition, education, family development sessions, and other such
services offered by the government. It is a means of helping the beneficiaries through provision
of social and medical assistance and increasing the investment in human capital for society by
providing education to those who cannot afford it.
Going right through the results, I will be referencing the “Philippines Conditional Cash
Transfer Program Impact Evaluation 2012 (Executive Summary)” by the World Bank lastly revised
in April 2014.
Findings of the study indicate that, overall, the program is meeting its objective of helping
to keep poor children in school, by increasing enrollment among younger children (3-11 years
old) and increasing attendance among 6–17-year old’s. In particular, the program has been
successful in boosting the enrollment of primary-aged children (6-11 years old), helping to bring
about near universal enrollment of 98 percent enrolled in school among this age group. However,
the program was unable to even improve enrollment of children 12- 14 years of age, who are
currently covered under Pantawid Pamilya. Thus, the program as currently designed is unable to
keep older children in school. At the same time, the finding also implies that program should
consider expanding coverage to older children, and also reconsider the current five-year limit of
program eligibility, if long term human capital investments are to be sustained.
The program was found to be meeting its objective of helping to keep poor children
healthy. The program has helped improve the long-term nutritional status of younger children (6-
36 months old). The program has also encouraged poor women to use maternal and child health
services such as antenatal care, postnatal care, regular growth monitoring, and receipt of Vitamin
A and deworming pills. In addition, it has helped increase healthcare-seeking behaviors among
beneficiaries when their children become ill.
The program is also achieving its objective of enabling poor households to increase their
investments in meeting the health and education needs of their children. Additionally, study also
found that beneficiary households spent less on adult goods such as alcohol and that the program
may have contributed to increased savings among beneficiary households.
Overall findings suggests that in order to achieve overall improvements in education and
health outcomes, there is a need to intensify efforts to improve access to and quality of health
and education services for CCT beneficiaries. Also, expanding the duration of coverage will not
only help to keep children in school longer, it will also help to increase household consumption.
Additionally, linkages and coordination with health service providers need to be strengthened to
ensure that beneficiary mothers and children receive the services they require and to ensure a
continuum of care. Also, it is important to consider ways in which other social programs that may
have a long- term impact on the welfare of the poor could take advantage of Pantawid Pamilya’s
strong and effective social mobilization structure.”
In other words, 4Ps has been very effective for the years covered by the evaluation
although it can be furtherly improved. This answers the question of effectivity of the program.
While the above observations are persuasive, 4Ps may have certain pitfalls. There are
also pitfalls to the software, according to Maryjoy Mella, Floren Camille Osido, and Lemarie Suing
(2012), which can restrict its utility. One of the most important features of the 4Ps is that they are
a "demand-side" rather than a "supply-side" interference. This is especially evident in the case of
education and health care, where the recipients are being taken into the education and health
care systems rather than extending the education and health care systems to cover them.
Furthermore, while the 4Ps seeks to offer schooling to the vulnerable, it does not explicitly
discuss the socio-economic and political concerns that are the root causes of poverty, such as
economic elite families. Poverty can only be eradicated entirely if measures are in place to fix its
triggers (Mella, et al., 2012). This suggests that, while 4Ps is a beneficial initiative, the advantages
can be negated if the root problems are not resolved.
Another downside to this initiative is that it would have a tough time attracting interest from
other social classes, due to the fact that it would not help middle-income families, who are still
impacted by poverty and lack access to educational and health services but are not included in
the 4Ps' target demographic. This leads us back to the potential enhancements that can already
be considered.
Another big drawback to the 4Ps implementation is that it necessitates a significant
amount of support, which we actually lack. The 4Ps is a loan-based scheme, with a significant
portion of the funds used to finance the conditional cash grants provided to beneficiaries coming
from loans taken out overseas, especially in the United States (Mella, et al., 2012).
To conclude, 4P is useful to the vulnerable and has a developmental target. In the other
hand, a more detailed estimation of the program's priority and systematic requirements for those
that must be met are needed. The design is conditional, and the government must arrange for
other people to meet these criteria. Without such given conditions, even disadvantaged people
are under pressure to meet the specifications. Finally, although this initiative has positive ideas,
it is deficient in a few main areas that demand consideration, such as requirements,
circumstances, target markets, and systemic architecture.
References
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March 2021.
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