4PS

Over 1.5 M 4Ps family beneficiaries now non-poor

(The Philippine Star) | Updated April 6, 2016 - 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines More than 1.5 million family-beneficiaries of the governments poverty alleviation program or the Pantawid
Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) have been removed from the list of being the poorest of the poor and are now classified as nonpoor.
This was among the findings of the recent 2015 National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) or
Listahanan conducted by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in coordination with the Philippine Statistics
Authority (PSA).
Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said the agency is now focusing its efforts on helping these 1.5 million familybeneficiaries remain above the poverty threshold set by the PSA.
Together with our development partners in the Asian Development Bank, World Bank and the Australian government, we are
developing a program we call the near poor, Soliman said during the launch of the 2-15 Listahanan Database of Poor Families in
the Philippines at the Manila Hotel yesterday morning.
She said the DSWD and its partners are looking at and identifying programs so these 1.5 million family-beneficiaries would not sink
back to poverty level.
Thats what we think is the next step, to ensure that these beneficiaries will continue to move up and attain self-sufficiency,
Soliman said.
Headlines ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1
In his Listahanan 2015: Results and Innovations, UP school of statistics dean Dennis Mapa said they have looked at the database
of the first Listahanan survey of 2009, as well as the roster of 4Ps beneficiaries as of December 2015.
Mapa said they found that the 1.5 million family-beneficiaries were no longer among the countrys poorest of the poor.
He said they designed a particular rating system to delineate poverty thresholds using the Proxy Means Test (PMT) modeling, a
statistical model that approximates household income based on household characteristics such as educational attainment, livelihood
or occupation of household members, and the appliances, pieces of furniture and other household assets they owned.
The Listahanan data on the targeted poor households were collected through a comprehensive, objective and transparent houseto-house assessment, Soliman said.
Over 1.5 M 4Ps family beneficiaries now non-poor
More than 1.5 million family-beneficiaries of the governments poverty alleviation program or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino
Program (4Ps) have been removed from the list of being the poorest of the poor and are now classified as non-poor.
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The 1.5 million Pantawid Pamilya household beneficiaries represents a large percentage (36%) of the total 4.2 million active 4Ps
beneficiaries.

Megan 18 YEARS OLD

Can you provide work rather that make our countrymen dependent on 4Ps. This
is a wrong solution. You are encouraging them not to work since they can get
benefits from the government. This is a waste of government resources. Why
not have a rigid plan and invest on the potential of the people which in the end
we all benefit from it. The 4ps fund came from taxes and international loan
without a return of investment. This people who should have been working
rather that fall in line for a day depict the stigma of "Juan Tamad". The 4ps fund
could have given them jobs and security that would last longer than this.

Why Conditional Cash Transfers work

Published July 15, 2013 3:43pm

By LILA RAMOS SHAHANI
Despite criticism that the billions invested in the CCT program could have been better spent
on job creation and that many poor families were missed, the government argues that it has
not only improved school attendance and health care coverage, but has actually reduced
violence in conflict-ridden areas.
Today, the government intends to spend even more on its flagship poverty alleviation
program, as it hopes to target greater student attendance in high school and not just in
elementary. By 2015, a quarter of the population is expected to be beneficiaries, including
new categories for coverage such as abandoned children, the disabled, and those
displaced by calamities or conflict. No social protection program in Philippine history has
ever reached this breathtaking breadth and scale.
Lila Ramos Shahani of the Aquino administrations Human Development and Poverty
Reduction Cabinet Cluster explains.
No other anti-poverty program has ever attracted the kind of sustained global attention that
Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have. Funded by the World Bank and other international
institutions, they began as far back as the 1990s in Brazil and other parts of Latin America.
Since then, CCT programs in a variety of permutations have spread swiftly across many
parts of the globe. They have not only been applied in developing countries but even
metropolitan cities like New York, where poverty continues to remain a glaring problem.
Why this avid receptivity to CCTs the world over? Simply defined, CCTs make a set amount
of cash available to families for the education and health of their children. Receipt of these
funds is contingent upon meeting the criteria of the government and fulfilling their
obligations. Unlike Keynesian-inspired welfare programs of the past, which had aimed to
provide benefits for all citizens, CCTs take on a more neo-liberal approach to the provision
of basic social services.
They target only those who are considered to be the poorest of the poor. The receipt of
cash is based upon the behavior of recipients. In effect, CCTs are designed to discipline
parents in assuming direct responsibility for the welfare of their children. The State acts
simply to monitor (and, if necessary, mediate in order to protect) the welfare of the child,
rather than to intervene directly. More importantly, CCTs are meant to effect generational
change: they are not meant to produce immediate effects in the here and now (a minor
detail nay-sayers conveniently tend to ignore) but are designed to address poverty across
future generations.

As with any new and rapidly-spreading program, CCTs have had mixed results, calling for
refinements and re-calibrations from place to place. In this article, we will review the state of
CCTs in the Philippines currently, the most ambitious and far-reaching anti-poverty
measure of this or any other administration. We will examine its applications, its successes,
and its possible shortcomings. Finally, we will look at current recommendations by different
scholars and policy experts for improving the program.
The 4Ps
Some four million of the countrys poorest households are now receiving conditional
transfers under the governments flagship anti-poverty program, the Pantawid Pamilyang
Pilipino Program, or 4Ps.
REACHING OUT. One of the many Filipino families helped by the 4Ps program. Photo from
the DSWD website
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), in its first quarterly report of
the year, reported that the 4Ps have reached 100% coverage in the regional, provincial, and
municipal levels, and a 98.54% coverage rate at the barangay level.
The program hopes to invest in the countrys human capital by keeping poor children in
school and giving them medical assistance, while extending immediate financial support to
their families. The cash transfers are dependent upon each households compliance with
these conditions. As of the first quarter of this year, compliance rates for both the education
and health components have been high an impressive 96% school attendance rate and
95% immunization rate for beneficiary children, not to mention a significant improvement in
the delivery of health services for women and their children.
Considering that maternal mortality happens to be one of the biggest social challenges
today (with a high 221 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, making this our
poorest national achievement in terms of the Millennium Development Goals), the fact that
CCTs have encouraged women to seek health care before and after child birth has been
critical.
Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman recently observed that women in 4P families tend
to have at least four prenatal checkups, improving compliance to a high 64 percent, in
comparison to the low 54 percent for non-4P beneficiaries. An impact evaluation of the 4Ps
done last year by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Australian Aid further
emphasized that mothers in 4P families generally received more health care before and
after child birth compared to those not enrolled in the program.
.

HEALTHY FAMILIES. One of the 4P conditions: Regular check-ups for children. DSWD
Aside from targeting children, the program also aspires to help parents. The program
provides for Family Development Sessions (FDS) meant to empower parents and better
equip them to look after their children.
Early success
Historically, the 4Ps have been the countrys biggest social protection program, emulating
the successful conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America, particularly Brazils
Bolsa Familia and Mexicos Oportunidades.
Bolsa Familia is considered one of the most active contributors to Brazils social and
economic transformation. First implemented in 2003, it is now the worlds largest CCT
program, reaching more than 46 million people.
Since 2011, Brazil has lifted around 22 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty. It is
reported that the share of wealth of Brazils richest 20% declined over the past decade,
while the poorest 20% increased their share from 2.6 to 3.5%.
The equally-lauded Oportunidades of Mexico, meanwhile, has been credited with lowering
the incidence of illness among children enrolled in the program.
Reducing conflict
After just five years, the 4Ps have also been shown to impact not just individual families but
entire communities.
INCLUSIVE GROWTH. The 4Ps aim to gradually reach more poor families. Photo by
Ramon Raquid
In a recent University of Denver study entitled Conditional Cash Transfers and Civil
Conflict: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines by Crost, Felter and Johnston, the
4Ps were cited as a primary factor in reducing the incidence of conflict in the country.
The study, which primarily used data from the Armed Forces of the Philippines,
demonstrates that there was a sharper decrease in the number of reported conflicts in
villages where the program was introduced in 2009 than in those where the program was
delayed until 2010.
The Philippines is home to some of the worlds longest-running communist and Islamic
insurgencies.

The study demonstrates that cash transfers encourage the public to trust the government
and provide them with valuable information regarding insurgents. More importantly, cash
transfers increase the opportunity cost of joining an insurgency, since it becomes difficult for
anyone to receive payments once they become an active insurgent.
Direct cash transfers like the 4Ps are also seen as being more effective in reducing conflict
than community-driven development (CDD) programs or food aid, which attract attention,
are easily intercepted, and are more likely to be sabotaged by insurgent groups. Physical
and in-kind aid also increases the amount of resources conflicting parties could fight over.
A study done on Colombias version of CCTs, Familias en Accin, by the German Economic
Association further reveals that CCTs help increase enrolment in conflict-stricken areas.
Like the Philippines, Colombia suffers from a long-running separatist guerrilla movement.
Leakage rate
The program has been praised by international organizations like the World Bank (WB) and
the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for its significant role in the improvement of health and
education among the poor.
Not everyone is impressed, however, with some claiming that that the 4Ps are nothing but a
band-aid masquerading as a form of genuine social protection.
IBON Foundation, a non-stock and non-profit development organization, sees them as a
dole-out program that merely exacerbates the countrys debt after all, the program is
partially funded through loans from the WB and ADB.
IBON claims that the 4Ps are unsustainable and that their impact upon poverty alleviation
has been insignificant.
KADAMAY (Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap), an urban poor organization, also claims
that, despite the enormous budget allotted for CCTs, the program has not truly improved the
lives of the poor.
In a public debate held by KADAMAY in February of this year, their leader, Carlito Badion,
argued that the government, instead of allocating millions for CCTs, should instead spend
its budget on strengthening industries that could generate jobs for the poor.
Indeed, it must be admitted that, despite the countrys outstanding GDP growth of 7.8% this
quarter, the Philippines has been unsuccessful in reducing the income gap. The latest
National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) report shows that the countrys poverty
incidence has remained virtually unchanged since 2006.

The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the countrys leading policy think
tank, reveals in a study that the 4Ps have been missing some of their targeted families. The
study, conducted by Dr. Celia Reyes of PIDS and presented at the recently concluded
Global Development Conference at the Asian Development Bank, suggests that the 4Ps
have a leakage rate of around 29%.
This means that only 70.81% of the total number of beneficiaries are actually income poor
and belong to the bottom fifth of the population.
And, of those who are income poor, only 7.2% became non-poor when given cash transfers.
DSWD identifies beneficiary families through a combination of geographic targeting and a
Proxy-Means-Testing (PMT) method, known as the National Household Targeting System
for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR). Municipalities are selected if they have a poverty
incidence rate of 50% or higher. Using the NHTS-PR, households are categorized as poor if
their predicted incomes fall below the provincial poverty threshold. If a family has a pregnant
woman or children between 0-14 at the time of the assessment, they are enrolled in the
program.
The NHTS-PR has identified a total of 5.2 million poor families in the country, eighty-two
percent of whom live in rural areas.
High school completion
Reyes also notes that school enrolment in 4P families falls significantly for children aged 13
and above. This means that, as children from beneficiary families become ineligible for cash
transfers, there is less incentive for them to continue schooling.
INVESTING IN HUMAN CAPITAL. The 4Ps rank education as one of the top concerns: It
aims to help children stay in school, preparing them for a more productive and meaningful
future. Photo by Ana Maria Raymundo
As such, according to PIDS, school attendance among 4P families falls drastically as a child
grows older: from 93.6% for those aged 13 to just 33.8% for those aged 18.
There appears to be no significant difference in school attendance for those aged 15-18
between 4P families and non-4P families.
In an earlier policy paper, Reyes compared the Philippines version of the CCTs to those of
its Latin American counterparts Mexicos Oportunidades extends cash assistance up to
the age of 22 or until a student graduates from high school, with more money given to those

in the higher grades. Economic incentives are also given to those who graduate from high
school before the age of 22.
Brazils Bolsa Familia, likewise, gives greater subsidies to adolescents than to children, and
covers them until they are 17 years old.
Reyes points out that the program should aim for high school rather than elementary
completion, as there is higher pay and more employment opportunities for high school
graduates than elementary graduates.
PIDS notes that, in the Philippines, those who have earned a high school diploma earn at
least 45% higher than those who have only attended some years of elementary. This
suggests one way in which the 4Ps could theoretically strengthen their investment in human
capital.
Boys left behind
Sadly, many boys from the poorest families are leaving the school system early to help
augment their family incomes.
CLASS-GENDER PERSPECTIVE. In the Philippines, a childs education may be disrupted
because of a familys financial problems. It is not unusual for boys to skip school in order to
work. Photo by Jordana Queddeng
In the same Global Development conference, it was generally agreed that income disparity
was one of the most significant impediments to solving global poverty. In a seminal study by
Hugo opo and Alejandro Hoyos on the Latin American experience, it was established that
over a decade of investment in CCTs has had a significant impact on income inequality in
the aggregate. However, it was also found that poverty in the long run had not always been
reduced, in large part because of a worsening in the standard of education, among other
worrisome factors.
In a nutshell: boys from the lowest 20th percentile of the population are leaving schools to
look for work, or worse: to join gangs and go into drugs. As one WB policy wonk put it:
however politically incorrect it might be, it is now high time we started to focus on our lost
boys.
Indeed, the report reveals that, in 2011, more boys (22%) than girls (8.3%) tended to drop
out of school at the age of 15 throughout the region. Six out of ten 18-year old boys were
working instead of studying.

In this country, we will have to brace ourselves for the possibility that this may well happen
in the near future: hence the need to fine-tune existing programs. NSCB Secretary-General
Jose Toots Gatmaitan Albert advocates having distinct levels of support for children of
different ages, rather than a blanket P300 per month for each child. Ideally, boys, like older
children, should be given higher support (as with Mexico's Oportunidades). More
importantly, support has to extend so children can finish high school.
Future plans: Modified CCTs
PIDS suggests that the program should focus on providing longer assistance from five to
10 years, or even longer to current beneficiaries to ensure that their children finish high
school.
To address the issue, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad says that government officials are
now considering the idea of extending the CCT program to ensure that its beneficiaries will
finish high school, which would then give them greater employment opportunities.
The government has made plans not only to increase the number of beneficiaries, but also
to extend coverage in general.
A modified conditional cash transfer or MCCT approach is now in the works to include
families who have been displaced by calamities and conflict, who belong to Indigenous
Peoples groups, and who have children in need of special assistance.
Such children are those who may have various forms of disability, who have been
abandoned, or who have been forced to engage in child labor.
EXTENDING SUPPORT. In the future, the 4Ps will include more families who are in need of
special assistance because of disasters like Ondoy. Photo by Ramon Raquid
To solve the leakage rate, the National Household Targeting Office (NHTO) at DSWD now
conducts a validation activity, where the community verifies the list of poor households in
their respective areas. The list is posted in conspicuous places throughout the community,
which encourages the public to react if and when they disagree with any particular family
listed.
Complaints and queries are then received by NHTO staff members, who forward it to a
Local Verification Committee which, in turn, resolves these complaints and appeals.
As the country races to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the government gears up
its efforts to bring development to all sectors of society. Longer-term returns on investment

in human capital, after all, will not be seen overnight, and it is well worth to remember that
CCTs are ultimately a social investment for the future.
The NSCB estimates that around P180 billion is needed yearly for the governments poverty
alleviation program, and the CCTs P39-billion allotment last year has only increased to P44
billion this year.
Budgetary constraints notwithstanding, the 4Ps has managed to make enormous headway
in improving school enrolment, health care coverage, immunization rates, and even
resolving conflict in targeted families and communities.
In 2015, the 4Ps are projected to cover some 28 million poor Filipinos a quarter of the
nations population. No social protection program in our history has ever reached this
breathtaking breadth and scale. But even as our economy grows in leaps and bounds, we
must continue to make every effort to ensure that no Filipino no matter how poor is
ever left behind.