I once tried to do Research on
something that I am really interested in, also as a requirement for a Master's
Degree of a friend who is seeking my help.
It only got set aside because she
quit the course. Now, I was thinking if only I did finish that research, it
could have been done by now and we are already seeing the results.
I regret that I didn't pursue it,
because it could have changed other people's perception of this government
program.
I.
INTRODUCTION
THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND
For a number of years now, the whole
country has been talking about the Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer dubbed
as the “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program”. The program chief
implementer, the Department of Social Welfare and Development has received so
few compliments and a truck load of comments and criticisms regarding the
carrying out of the said CCT, the program itself has been the favourite topic
of investigative news programs always questioning the efficiency of the program
and if it really provide an opportunity to solve the social reality that it
wishes to address. Pantawid Program is a development program designed to
promote investment in human capital among poor families with 0-18 years old
children. Aims to deal with the following MDGs:
1. Reducing extreme poverty and
hunger;
2. Achieving universal primary
education;
3. Reducing child mortality;
4. Improving maternal health;
Ζ’and
5. Promoting gender equality &
empowering women.
Pantawid Program was patterned after
the conditional cash transfer programs in Latin American like the “Programa
Bolsa Familia” in Brazil and African countries which have been proven
successful as a poverty reduction and social development measure, Pantawid
Program supports DSWD’s vision, mission and mandate and is aligned with the
department’s goals of reducing poverty and empowering the poor.
The Pantawid Program has two main
objectives, first is Social Assistance by providing assistance to the poor to
alleviate their immediate needs (short term) and second is Social Development
to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty through investment in human
capital i.e., education, health and nutrition (long term). Following these
objectives, the Department of Social Welfare and Development set a number of
conditionalities for the program beneficiaries and they are as follows:
1.
Children 0-5 years of age get
regular preventive health checkups and vaccines
2.
Children 3-5 years of age Attend day
care / preschool at least 85% of the time
3.
Children 6-14 years of age Attend
elementary or high school at least 85% of the time
4.
Pregnant women must get pre-natal
care, must be delivered by a skilled birth attendant and must get postnatal
care
5.
Mothers must attend mother’s classes
6.
Parents must attend Parent
Effectiveness Seminars and Responsible Parenthood Seminars
The Pantawid Program is laid out
perfectly, since program eligibility is conditioned on pre-determined variables
such as household composition and observable correlates of poverty, cash
transfers constitute an exogenous shock in household disposable income,
resulting to an outward shift in the budget constraint that allows recipients
to reach a higher level of welfare. But as all programs, the judgement will not
be based just on the plan and its framework but on the actual output or result
that the program garners. Members of civic society groups, international
organizations, the common Filipinos and even some government agencies are
questioning the integrity of the program, saying that instead of pro-active
results, the program are just making the Filipinos indolent and therefore is
retro-active, some says that the program is dole out and also just a front for
corruption for elected officials.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program
provides cash grants to poor households conditional on pre-determined
investments in human capital. This study analyzed its impact the program
beneficiaries, The study was undertaken by the researcher to construe the
extent to which the status of the program beneficiaries in terms of their
socio-economic well being, has progressed or its opposite, the researcher would
like to make a comparative evaluation of the well-being of the program
beneficiaries before, during and after they have benefited from the program
services. The study was conducted to answer the question on how the 4ps really
helped or is it really helping the Filipino poor. If the program really
empowered the poor, the researcher set as a purpose of this study to pinpoint
the tangible evidence in support of those supposed empowerment or evidence on
the contrary.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The study was conducted in order to
determine the level of impact of the Pantawid program to its beneficiaries, to
assess the current trend in the well-being of the beneficiaries since the
implementation of the program. Specifically, the study sought answer to the
following questions:
1.
What is difference between of the
beneficiaries “Before” and “After” their coverage
as program services recipients in terms of:
1.1 Socio-economic Capacity
1.1.1
Spending Power
1.1.1 Affording of Basic Needs
1.2 Social Capacity
1.2.1 Employment
and Employable Skills
1.2.2
Participation in Social Activities
1.2.3 Social
Empowerment
2.
What are the beneficiaries own
reflections on the effects of the program onto their families?
3.
What are the tangible evidence of
“short term” and “midterm” impacts of the program on the lives of the
beneficiaries?
4.
What are the effects of the program
to the holistic improvement of the standard of living in the community?
5.
How sustainable are the social
services deliveries of the Pantawid Program?
6.
What recommendations can be given to
improve the level of empowerment and the level of sustainability of the
projects?
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The
results of the study are deemed beneficial to the following:
DSWD
personnel. This will serve as basis for evaluation and review of their
existing policies and programs relative to the implementation of Pantawid
Pamilyang Pilipino Program and to serve as base for recommending beneficial
future considerations and amendments to the said policies.
Local
Government Units. This can serve as model
guide for community leaders in planning and proposing programs to see to it
that it would supplement for progress and development in the community and
program beneficiaries.
Community
beneficiaries. This
will serve as their guide in program implementation, review and
expansion.
Stakeholders. This will serve as
encouragement for them to give full support in terms of participation and
cooperation in the implementation of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.
DEFINITION
OF TERMS
In order to have common frame of
reference to the terms used in this study, the following are hereby
operationally defined.
- Pantawid Program – is a short term for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. 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.
- Program Beneficiaries – these are the recipients of the Pantawid Program targeted out of the poorest among the poor households in the country through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction also by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
- DSWD – this is an acronym for Department of Social Welfare and Development, the chief implementing agency of the Pantawid Program.
- Phenomenological – is a term used by the researcher to connote the current trend in the politics and implementation of the Pantawid Program, to differentiate the current situation of the Program Beneficiaries from their pre-coverage situation.
- Socio-Economic Development – refers to the development in the economic power of Program Beneficiaries.
- Social Development - refers to the development in the social capacity of Program Beneficiaries.
- Pre-coverage situation – refers to the situation that the program beneficiaries are in before the implementation of the Pantawid Program.
- Post-coverage situation - refers to the situation that the program beneficiaries are in during and after the implementation of the Pantawid Program.
SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This study was conducted to investigate 1) the level of impact of the effects
of the Pantawid Program to the lives of Program beneficiaries, and 2) to
compare their pre-coverage situation with the post-coverage situation to
ascertain the extent to which the Pantawid Program helped them. A descriptive
method of research was used in carrying out this study because it entails
describing data and characteristics of the phenomenon being studied. The
participants were the Program Beneficiaries of Brgy. Poblacion; Brgy. Manuel
Roxas; Brgy. Katipunan; Brgy. San Isidro and Brgy. Sajaneba but limited only to
Program beneficiaries in batch 6-A whether active or delisted of the Pantawid
Program. The researcher opted for these program sites because these are the
program beneficiaries most accessible to the researcher.
II.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Related Literature
This section presents the review of
related literatures and studies that have similarities with the study
undertaken.
An extensive body of literature that
evaluated CCT programs found that participation in such brings positive effects
on families’ use of education and health services while concurrently reducing
poverty and child labor. The World Bank, after reviewing several
evaluation studies, was able to conclude that CCTs have improved the lives of
poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted toward poor
households, raised consumption levels, and reduced poverty by a substantial
amount in some countries. These rigorous impact evaluations have successfully
convinced political leaders in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East
to invest in CCT programs and investigate how they can be made more effective.
In a number of countries, those impact studies have also persuaded their
political leadership that when outcomes are uncertain and budgets limited,
random assignment to treatment and control among eligible poor households is a
more transparent and fairer selection procedure than political handpicking
(EAST ASIAN DEVELOPMENT NETWORK’s 2013 EADN WORKING PAPER No. 71).
However, the World Bank panel of
experts reviewed the existing evidence of the real impacts of CCT programs in
2009 found some mixed results. While the programs helped reduce extreme poverty
rates, the increase in school attendance did not necessarily result in better
learning outcomes, nor did improved utilization of public health services
translate into better health. The analysis of Chaudhury and Okamura
(2012) on CCT and school enrolment in the Philippines found an almost 9 percent
increase in the enrolment among the younger cohort aged 9-12 (as of 2011) who
were eligible for grants under the program throughout 2008 and 2011. The
program was able to help address the education gap between beneficiary and
non-beneficiary households in a short amount of time. However, no statistically
significant impact was found for the older cohort of children aged 13-17 (as of
2011), most of whom were no longer eligible for grants due to the age limit (14
years) set by the program. The researchers suggested that additional measures
(e.g., raising the age limit, increasing the grant amount for older children,
parallel supply-side interventions in the education sector) are required to
improve educational outcomes for older children.
Continuing policy debates concerning
design of anti-poverty programs in both developed and developing countries
frequently include the question of whether or not transfers should be
conditioned on school enrolment or medical checkups of children. The
conditionality of transfers raises enforcement problems (i.e., verifying that
required conditions are being met), as well as administrative problems of
coordinating schooling, medical and anti-poverty programs.
These would be justified only if
there were substantial benefits of retaining these conditionalities. Yet, there
appears to be no clear demonstration of the nature of these benefits, either
theoretically or empirically.
Poverty
Poverty remains a big challenge for
the Philippines. Income poverty in the Philippines has generally declined since
the early 1990s. From 33.1 percent of the population being poor in 1991, the
share of poor Filipinos was brought down to 24.9 percent in 2003. In recent
years, however, there was a reversal in this trend. Latest official poverty
estimates show that poverty has increased since 2003. In 2009, the share of the
poor population, or those who are unable to meet their basic food and non-food
needs, was estimated at 26.5 percent (NSCB, 2011). In addition to income
poverty, human development outcomes especially in education and health are
lagging. Primary education is still far from universal while maternal mortality
and child malnutrition are among the highest in East Asia and Pacific region
(NEDA et al, 2010). This happened despite the historically high record of
economic growth in 2000 until 2010, which averaged 4.7 percent annually versus
2.4 percent of the two decades before. This suggests that, on aggregate, the
poor have not benefited from growth (Welfare and Distributional Impacts of the
Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program 2011). Poverty, according to UP School of
Economics’ 2014 Discussion Papers, is caused by the inability to acquire and
maintain productive asset stocks. Among the poorest households, subsistence
living, market failures, and predominance of risks preclude the possibility of
investing on development of capital that can improve productivity or income
over time. For the past two decades, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs
have gained enormous popularity both as a mechanism for inclusive social
protection and as a strategy for breaking the so-called intergenerational cycle
of poverty. CCTs provide cash grants to beneficiary households
conditional on compliance to specified investments on human capital, mainly
sending children to school and availing of preventive health care services.
Cash grants also aim to protect households from persistent hunger and
malnourishment that impede productivity and cognition. CCTs are targeted to the
poorest section of the population, generally among households that have
schooling-age children. Originating in Mexico in 1997, there are now around
thirty countries worldwide implementing their version of a conditional cash
transfer program [World Bank 2009]. Overall, CCTs appear to be achieving
the program’s explicit short-term goals.2 School participation rates have
increased among children of CCT households and they are less likely to drop-out
from school. The program has also helped address differential access to
schooling due to age, gender, or minority group affiliation. Utilization of
preventive health services has increased, improving access of children and
pregnant women to immunization, nutrient supplements, and regular health
monitoring. The tremendous expansion of CCTs has also highlighted
the immense task of improving public infrastructure. CCT experience have
increasingly emphasized that the more substantial outcomes – better student
learning and improved health status – will not be realized unless governments
build more and better facilities and provide accessible essential services.
SOCIAL WELFARE
Social welfare is a development
priority of the Philippine government. Conceptually, social welfare refers to
the "well being of all the members of human society, including their
physical, mental, emotional, social, economic and spiritual" state. It can
be achieved through laws, programs, benefits, and services that assure or
strengthen provisions in meeting basic needs. Ultimately, social welfare
provisions redound to the good of the social order. These provisions may be
directed to –
• strengthening existing
arrangements; • mitigating the hardships or handicaps of particular individuals
and groups; • pioneering new services; • stimulating a better adaptation of the
social structure; • including the creation of new programs as needed; or, • a
combination of these approaches to respond to social needs.
Another view holds that
social welfare is attained when "well being" is manifested by people.
To achieve well being requires three elements. The first is the degree to which
social problems are managed. The second is the extent to which needs are met.
Third is the degree to which opportunities for advancement is provided. In
other words, it is important to set up mechanisms by which the attainment of
well being is assured, and to make sure that this is sustained and improved.
The concept of well being covers broad requirements, such as income, security,
housing, education, recreation, and cultural traditions. Services
to address these requirements are not necessarily lodged in one office. For
instance, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) caters to the
broad social welfare needs of the population. Different government agencies
undertake other social welfare requirements that need specialized services
(i.e., health and labor). Social welfare needs to be pursued as part of the
process of governance. Governance deals with managing resources and political
authority to ensure that public programs address basic needs in a way that
conforms to accepted standards of effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, equity,
and sustainability(VICTORIA A. BAUTISTA, PH.D. 2015).
OVERVIEW OF THE PANTAWID PAMILYA
PROGRAM
The government developed the
Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Pantawid Pamilya) that has now become its
flagship social assistance program to help the poor. The Pantawid Pamilya is a
conditional cash transfer (CCT) program that provides short-term income support
to the poor to help them meet their immediate needs while enhancing their human
capital to overcome future poverty. It provides cash to eligible households if
they agree and comply with the program’s conditions. This new approach to
addressing poverty was adopted by the Philippine government following the
success of CCTs in Latin America. The Pantawid Pamilya was launched in February
2008 with the first 330,000 household beneficiaries (Set 1) and then scaled up
in 2009 to cover another 320,000 households (Set 2). By April 2011, the program
has grown to about 1.9 million household beneficiaries and is slated for
further expansion by the end of 2011 and 2012. To become eligible for the
Pantawid Pamilya, a household needs to satisfy a uniform set of criteria, which
include (i) residing in program areas of the Pantawid Pamilya, (ii) being
identified as poor based on a proxy means test (PMT), and (iii) having a
pregnant woman or having at least one child below 15 years old at the time of
enrolment into the program.
Being a conditional cash transfer
program, beneficiaries receive grants when they comply with program
conditionalities. The Pantawid Pamilya provides two types of grants – a health
grant of Php 500 ($125) per household per month for 12 months and an education
grant of Php 300 ($7) per 6-14 year old child attending school (for a maximum
of 3 children in this age range) for 10 months of the school year.6 Health
conditions apply to pregnant mothers and children aged 0-5, while education
conditions apply to children aged 6-14. A beneficiary household can receive a
maximum health grant of Php 6,000 ($143) and a maximum education grant of Php
3,000 ($72) per child if it complies with the health and education
conditionalities of the program 100 percent throughout the year. Actual grants
received by beneficiaries depend on their compliance to health and education
conditions, which is regularly monitored through the Pantawid Pamilya’s
Compliance Verification System (CVS). Based on the latest CVS reports,
children’s attendance to school and visits to health centers have been
improving in 2010. In the last quarter of 2010, close to 80 percent of children
registered to receive the Pantawid Pamilya education grant complied with the
program conditions, that is, they were present in school at least 85 percent of
the time during that period. Compliance of children registered to receive the
health grant improved as well especially among Set 2 beneficiaries, although at
a slower pace than education. The increase in compliance rates especially in
early 2010 also reflects efforts made in updating beneficiary information. This
ensured that schools and health centers where children go are correctly
recorded in the system so that compliance is monitored properly and grants are
paid accordingly (Welfare and Distributional Impacts of the Pantawid Pamilyang
Pilipino Program 2011).
Beneficiaries for Pantawid Pamilya
are selected through a combination of geographical targeting and the proxy
means testing (PMT) method, known as the National Household Targeting System
for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR). Once program municipalities are defined,
beneficiary households are selected through the PMT. The PMT, centrally
designed in 2007 and implemented starting in 2008 by DSWD, predicts household
income using observable and verifiable variables that are highly correlated
with household income. Relevant variables for the PMT model were selected based
on an analysis of two household surveys in the Philippines, the Family Income
and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and Labor Force Survey (LFS) of 2003. Through
NHTS-PR, households are categorized as poor if the predicted income is below
the official provincial poverty threshold (Fernandez, 2012). Among the poor
households in program areas, eligible households—those with a pregnant mother
at the time of the Household Assessment by NHTS-PR and/or children between 0-14
years of age—are invited to enroll in the program by attending the community
assembly (Philippines Conditional Cash Transfer Program Impact Evaluation
2012).
Consumption pattern among
beneficiary households revealed their extreme poverty. Two thirds of
consumption is spent on food, the rest on a few basic necessities. Education,
health, and clothing together constitute a meager 6% of total household
consumption. The hypothesized consumption response of beneficiary households is
grounded on the distinction between goods conditioned-on by the program and
those that are not. Households will spend the minimum required on goods
monitored for program compliance, and residual response is determined by
preferences. These preferences, this study posits, are influenced by key
program aspects such as granting cash to women and monthly instructional
meetings. The observed impact of Pantawid Pamilya on consumption provides
credible evidence to the hypothesized response. Impact estimates show that
beneficiary households increased their consumption of education-related goods,
goods that are necessary for continued program participation. This is a good
signal of households’ resolve to perpetuate participation, presumably because
they understand the program logic and have positive expectations of its impact
on future household welfare. After spending on goods
conditioned-on by the program, Pantawid Pamilya households have spent the rest
of the additional income on food. Specifically, they prioritized carbohydrates.
This choice supports the view that women’s control over resources leads to
spending on goods that improve total household welfare, as food is known to be
more preferred by women than by men. Since cash grants tend to be lumpy due to
the payout cycle, mothers may opt to stock up on food to ensure sufficient
supply until the next pay-out. The obvious choice is rice or corn as it is
accessible, storable, and sufficient as stand-alone meal (UP School of
Economics Discussion Papers 2014).
III.
METHODOLOGY
This chapter contains the discussion pertaining to research design, research
participants, instrumentation, sampling technique, and data collection
procedure and data analysis. It also includes ethical consideration of the
researcher.
Research Design
The study made use of the descriptive method of research, utilizing survey
questionnaires and in-depth interviews in the gathering of information. This
method is seen appropriate for this study because the problem entails
describing data and characteristics about the population being studied;
answering the questions what and how.
Research Participants
The
Pantawid Program beneficiaries in the five (5) barangays of Municipality of
Sto. Nino namely, Brgy. Katipunan, Brgy. Manuel Roxas, Brgy. Poblacion, Brgy.
Sajaneba and Brgy. San Isidro was the participants of this study. There were a
total of ___________________ participants, 50 from program site. Tables 1 and 2
show the distribution of respondents.
Table
1 shows a total of 983 beneficiaries in all project sites deduced as follows:
Brgy. Katipunan has _________________________; Brgy. Manuel Roxas
with __________________________________; Brgy. Poblacion,
_________________________________; Brgy. Sajaneba with
_____________________________, and Brgy. San Isidro, ________________________.
Fifty (50) samples were taken from each group summing the participants of the
study to two hundred (250).
Table
2 shows the distribution of participants for the Focus Group Discussion (FGD).
Because the FGD is in-depth, only the Parent Leaders in the clusters within
each barangay were taken as samples for FGD. There are _______________________parent
leaders in all of the five barangays that made up the __________ participants.
Table 1
Distribution
of Participants
Barangay
|
No. of
Beneficiaries
|
No. of
participants
|
Total
|
Table
2
Distribution
of Participants in the FGD
Barangay
|
Number of
Parent leaders
(Combination of Male and Female)
|
Total
|
Instrumentation
The
researcher utilized the questionnaire used as the surveying tool for the Social
Welfare Indicator administered by the DSWD in assessing the level of well-being
of the program beneficiaries. A copy of the said surveying tool shall be sent
to the adviser for amendments to suit the purpose of the study before it was
subjected to the evaluation by experts in the field in order to ensure validity
and reliability of the instrument. The questionnaire is composed of
______________ parts. Part I pertains to __________________________. Part II
relates to __________________________. Part III pertains to
______________________________________. (Please see Appendix A).
Sampling Technique
The researcher used purposive sampling in identifying the sample population.
This was so because the researcher already had a particular group of people in
mind. Also, because of the proximity of the areas where the target population
live was very difficult for the researcher to gather all the prospect
population. Hence, purposive sampling was the only option. The researcher took
as samples those project beneficiaries who live near the program areas because
others live very far from the area and reaching them was next to impossible.
Data Collection
The researcher followed a certain
process in gathering data.
1. A letter of request asking
permission to conduct the study was sent to the head of DSWD Regional Office
XII.
2. When the request was granted, the
researcher personally administered the questionnaires to the respondents.
3. In-depth interviews were
also conducted in order to deepen and validate the result of the
questionnaires.
4. Tabulation, interpretation
and analysis of data followed.
Data Analysis
Because the study is qualitative in nature, the researcher made use of frequencies
and averages as means of treating data.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
At the time of reporting research
results, the researcher’s ethical duty to be honest becomes paramount.
·
The researcher provided an honest
accounting of how the research was carried out and where the initial research
has to be changed.
·
The researcher maintained a full
record of the research project so that questions can be answered if they arise.
·
The researcher avoided lying and
using graphs to mislead.
·
The researcher acknowledged sponsors
and benefactors of the research.
·
Thanked everyone who made major
contributions.
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