What a ’little’ money can do

Raquel is a transient domestic worker who comes to Manila only during the summer months when her children are enjoying their break from school. She says the P5,000 she earns during the two months is a big help for her family throughout the rest of the year when her children go back to school.

When school starts, she makes sure she’s back home to keep her enrollment in the government’s 4Ps list active. As a conditional cash transfer program started in her locality a few years ago, she is entitled to about P3,000 a year for every child eligible for primary school level.

With four young children enrolled in the program, she gets a total of P12,000 a year as long as she abides by certain conditions, one among them is ensuring her children attend the minimum number of school days stipulated by the program.

So why doesn’t she keep her job for 10 months instead, and just go home during the school break? Definitely, P25,000 would bring infinitely much more financial aid to her household that traditionally relies on the sporadic farm help income of her husband.

Obviously, money isn’t everything to Raquel. She is happy to be home seeing her children going to school utilizing the P1,000-a-month (or about P30 a day) 4Ps allowance for food and some basic learning supplies the local elementary public school will not provide.

Before, the children could easily be pulled out of school to help for farm work to earn some money for the household food. Today, with the P30 a day allowance, there is less pressure to force the children to work; this small amount certainly goes a long way to fill up the bellies of the whole family and make them sleep soundly at night.

Tried and tested

4Ps stands for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, the Philippines’ version of the highly successful conditional cash transfer (CCT) scheme first introduced in the 1990s in Brazil and Mexico, but is now popularly used by many countries trying to battle their increasing poverty levels.

CCT is widely accepted today as an effective, albeit expensive, tool that governments can rely on to reduce the number of their citizens belonging to the poverty and poor levels. In the Philippines, the amount set aside by government has risen to about a third of the country’s annual budget.

Even at its cost, the Philippine government decided to adopt the program based on simple mathematical assumptions. Studies have indicated that a Filipino family of five needs an income of about P7,000 a month to stay out of poverty.

And the dole-out of cash, even if seemingly small, under the CCT program definitely provides some crucial financial relief to these families, majority of which are noted to be at borderline levels where they cross poverty lines depending on the work availability cycles in their local environment.

While normally utilized as interventions to improve nutrition, health, and education of targeted poor families, the CCT has been also known to be used as a temporary relief measure for communities stricken by crippling disasters, such as Super Typhoon Yolanda.

Social investment

The Philippines recently joined the top three countries in the world that adhere to CCT based on the number of families enrolled. At over 4.5 million families now in the list, the value of 4Ps is best appreciated for upgrading human capital.

Not only are the children of poor families encouraged to stay in school, mothers (and even fathers) are guided to keep their links open and active with local government social development units, thus ensuring the 4Ps beneficiaries directly receive the program’s benefits.

To also help in ensuring the cash goes to deserving families, additional intervention by international agencies in monitoring the progress of the program – from choosing beneficiaries to checking compliance to the cash transfer requirements – is observed.

While the long-term benefits is yet to be quantified for the Philippines, government social workers are optimistic the relatively small amounts extended to the target families is substantial enough, especially since majority of Filipinos in the poverty ranks are categorized as transient, or borderline poor.

Empowering mothers

Raquel, our Filipino mother in the above story, is typical of many Filipinas who are struggling to raise their family even in conditions of poverty and seemingly hopeless conditions – and this is where the success of CCT and 4Ps can be attributed.

Even in other countries where CCT is observed, such mothers have chosen to stretch the “little” amount they receive just so the future of their children are better secured with the schooling condition the program requires.

CCT has also helped empower women of this poor sector, largely through the forced exposure to local social development personnel, including those that deal with health care and education, and who have to give their signatures for the cash to be dispensed.

Yes, CCT may be a dole-out, something the other side of the social development world in the mold of “teach a man to fish” would rather not see, but cannot totally ignore especially in countries where poverty hounds majority of its population.

Reports on the effect of CCT in the countries that had first adopted the program showed a spill-over effect on the local economy. We should expect the same, where every peso that has been doled out will generate at least 35 percent of its value, and even as much as 250 percent.

MDG targets

For now, the story of 4Ps is regarded as one of the best in the world, having been instrumental in helping the country meet its Millennium Development Goal for 2016 of halving the number of Filipinos living below the national subsistence (food) threshold and of reducing the poverty gap ratio.

The Philippines is also firmly on its way to halving the proportion of its population living below national poverty threshold, and is quite optimistic that when the buzzer sounds in a few months’ time, there is one more green smiley face on the scoreboard.

Let’s hope that whatever “small change” our poor countrymen receive will indeed go a long, long way.

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