(Part IV)
Over the period under review, Philippine population grew at a rate faster than some of the major economies with which it is often compared in ASEAN.
Today, these countries have made big gains in terms of human capital development relative to us. Not unexpectedly, in overall economic accomplishments as well.
Population growth: Phl, Indonesia and Thailand. Two such countries to which the Philippines is often compared with are Indonesia and Thailand.
In 1950, both Thailand and the Philippines had roughly the same population levels, at around 20 million.
The larger country, Indonesia, was more populous, with nearly 80 million people. Initially, the Philippines and Thailand each had population sizes about one-fourth (or 25 percent) of Indonesia’s.
All three countries had high population growth rates during the decade, in the range of 3.1 to 2.4 percent per year, the lower of these rates being Indonesia’s population growth rate.)
During the late 1960s, Thailand and Indonesia undertook aggressive family planning programs. The Philippines also was active in pursuing a population program designed to help reduce the high fertility rate associated with the high population growth rate.
By 1995, the results of the population planning efforts were very visible in both Thailand and Indonesia. The Philippine program had achieved some noticeable reduction in the population growth rate (from around three percent to 2.1 percent), but was far behind that achieved in the two countries that succeeded in reaching 1.1 percent growth for Thailand and 1.6 percent for Indonesia.
Thailand’s population, at 58.8 million, was already by then 10 million less people than the 68.6 million for the Philippines.
Indonesia’s population was close to 195.6 million. This meant that the Philippine population size had risen faster relative to Indonesia’s. From 25 percent of the population of Indonesia, the Philippine population had reached 35 percent.
In 2019, the comparative population sizes stood at: Thailand, 69.6 million; Indonesia, 270.2 million; and the Philippines, 108 million.
In relative sizes, the Philippines has 38.4 million more people than Thailand. With respect to Indonesia, the Philippine population is slowly, but surely, creeping up to catch up with Indonesia’s large population so that by 2019, the Philippine population represented 40 percent of Indonesia’s!
Population and living standards. Other things remaining the same, the family unit (or the nation at large) has to support the nutrition, education and other needs of the dependent-young. The cost to the family unit (or nation) rises with more young children to support.
When incomes suffer in relation to the needs, living standards fall. (For the nation, it is the same. Resources for supporting education, food production etc. could be strained.)
Of course, with the same growth rate of output, or GDP, countries with different population growth rates differ in their economic productivity.
Assuming equal GDP growth rates, the country with a lower population growth rate is able to put more of that additional output to improve the living standards, including further investments in human capital.
In addition, countries that achieve higher average growth rates are likely to run away with faster per capital growth rates of output than countries burdened by high population growth rates. There is, therefore, a double-advantage over the country burdened by more dependent-populations.
What happened to our nat’l population program? The Philippine population program fell apart after 1980.
Today, I cannot find the population program narrative in any government publications, not even in the Population Commission website. Also, there is no Wiki information to even supplement the population program story.
The Population Commission is hardly functioning. The Population Foundation has a website that has little information. It seems the organizations, like the Responsible Parenthood Association, that were quite strong in the past, have disappeared from the scene.
The population program up to 1980. This is the story as I know it first-hand. The story is erased in national memory.
In 1970 I joined the government as chairman of the National Economic Council and later as planning minister/ director general of NEDA. The population planning program then was in ferment. I became intimately involved in the evolution of the family planning program.
Presidential Decree (PD) 79 created the Population Commission. It was a government committee of four major departments/ ministries: (1) Education; (2) Health; (3) Social Welfare; and (4) the NEDA; and (5) dean of the UP Population Institute. Later, up to four members were appointed to the commission to broaden its reach to the private sector.
The heart of the program was the participation of important government ministries that delivered services and information to families, especially women. This involved the services of the three ministries above in intricate ways – in education, family planning information, health services, and welfare assistance. The Population Commission had a staff to support this coordination. Also, it dispelled direct assistance and projects in the field.
The program was supported financially from development assistance sources, principally the USAID initially, and later the UN Assistance to Family Planning Agency.
It was a large program assisted principally from aid resources at first, but it was supposed to be carried out by government gradually.
Countries with political will (like Thailand and Indonesia) got support from similar sources, but eventually they began to take over part of the finance of their own program. Eventually, they got internalized in government as well.
When the first chairperson of the Population Commission, Estefania Aldaba-Lim, who was then minister/secretary of social welfare, left the service, the Commission members asked me to succeed as chairman of the commission. This was sometime in 1976.
To strengthen the program further, I formed a task force that included Armand Fabella, Dr. Juan Flavier, Mercedes Conception of the Population Institute UP to make recommendations to further focus the program toward family welfare and to involve growing support by the national government of the program, even as foreign assistance to the program was in decline.
In 1980, I left the NEDA and, hence, the Population Commission. My successor disagreed with the program and scuttled it.
My email is: gpsicat@gmail.com. For archives of previous Crossroads essays, go to: https://www.philstar.com/authors/1336383/gerardo-p-sicat. Visit this site for more information, feedback and commentary: http://econ.upd.edu.p h/gpsicat/