EDITORIAL - Human development indicators

It’s hard to make a significant dent in human development in this country in less than three years, but solid achievements are expected at the end of six years. Despite some gains in this area since 2010, the administration of daang matuwid still faces tough challenges. The latest Human Development Report ranks the Philippines 114th out of 186 countries.

An indicator of slow progress in the Philippines is that the country was ranked below all but Indonesia among the five founding members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The 2013 report, prepared by the United Nations Development Program and released earlier this month, observed that when countries with similar starting points take different development paths, the outcome is affected by “national forces, policies, institutions, social context and idiosyncratic shocks.”

In fact the Philippines did not have a similar starting point with other ASEAN members, but started out at the top when the regional bloc was founded in 1967 by the country together with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. In the 2013 Human Development Index or HDI, however, Singapore ranked 18th, at par with Austria; Malaysia placed 64th alongside Libya and Serbia; and Thailand was at 103rd. Only Indonesia was behind the Philippines, though not too far at 121st. Oil-rich Brunei, which joined ASEAN in 1984, placed 30th. Vietnam, which joined in 1995, is also closing in on the Philippines at 127th.

The HDI is based on factors that include per capita income, public health indicators, life expectancy, gender inequality and public spending on education. The report noted that in 2011-2012, approximately 18.4 percent of Filipinos lived on less than $1.25 a day, with 5.7 percent of the population living in severe impoverishment and 9.1 percent vulnerable to poverty.

In the coming years, the UNDP sees human development gains in the Asia-Pacific being led by China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The Aquino administration has three more years to make the Philippines part of that promising group.