Beating urban poverty

AMELITA, 33 YEARS OLD, USED to work as a server in a restaurant, while her 59-year-old husband was a taxi driver. Between them, the couple managed to save enough to begin building a house on a vacant piece of land.

But just when their house was about half complete, her husband suffered a stroke and all the money meant to be used for their house construction had to go to his hospitalization and other medical expenses. As if those were not enough, her eldest daughter was diagnosed with a mental illness, necessitating regular purchase of a relatively expensive drug.

To put yet another misfortune on top of the others, she lost her job when the restaurant she worked in was closed down by its owners. A high school drop-out, Amelita could not find another job. She joined neighbors in collecting recyclable garbage in the dumpsite for sale, but eventually stopped when she could not endure the heat and emerging health problems. She now gets by doing laundry for her neighbors, making P100 to P150 a week, which she supplements by taking care of her neighbors’ children or fetching water for them.

According to her, her meager income is already “malaking bagay” (a big deal) because it can buy rice and at least one ulam (viand).

Poverty and environment

Fifty one-year-old Carmelita has lived in her community in Cagayan de Oro for the last 30 years. Her husband is a fisherman who makes less than P5,000 a month. Her seven children with ages ranging from 20 to 35 years all continue to live with her, including two sons who are already married.
All are jobless, although the two married sons occasionally join their father to fish.

According to her, there are days when they have some money while there are many days when they find it difficult to sustain their lives. Their condition gets difficult when the fish catch is meager, and on certain instances, they could not even buy food. She attributes their present poverty to the depleting fishery resources, and attests that things used to be better in the past when there were fewer fishermen and a lot more fish resources.

Still, Carmelita believes they will still have a chance to improve their living conditions.

Urban poor stories

Amelita and Carmelita are but two of numerous case studies documented in a forthcoming book on urban poverty by Dr. Exaltacion Ellevera-Lamberte, dean of the College of Liberal Arts in the De La Salle University in Manila.

Documenting the dynamics of urban poverty from the point of view of the urban poor themselves, she finds that many of them have been poor since birth, and had moved to the city to seek opportunities to uplift their lives.
Among the critical factors that have pushed them into deeper poverty are (1) loss of job due to illness, (2) closure of business operation of the employer, (3) marital separation coupled with difficult circumstances and calamities that strike the family along the way, (4) losses or lack of success in small business ventures, (5) being left behind as an aging parent after a child’s marriage leads to loss of support, and (6) degraded environment.

Whether in rural or urban areas, the poor fall under the category of either chronic (core) poor, or transitory (borderline) poor. The former suffer from underlying limitations on income tracing to either poor asset endowments or low earnings derived from those assets. The latter slide into poverty as a result of short-term shocks.

Dynamics of poverty

All these point us to the types of antipoverty interventions needed. The transitory poor require social safety nets. Based on Dr. Lamberte’s findings above, the ones directly called for include effective health insurance, unemployment insurance, business insurance especially for small enterprises, assistance to separated dependent spouses, social security for senior citizens, and environmental protection measures.

Over time, the primary target should be chronic rather than transitory poverty, implying interventions to increase either asset endowments or the earnings derived from them (termed “cargo nets” in the literature, as opposed to safety nets). Such policies to increase asset endowments include education and health programs, credit support, and asset reform, the most prominent of which is land reform that caters to the rural poor. For the urban poor, the primary asset reform instrument to address their plight is public housing programs. On the other hand, policies aimed at raising asset earnings include wages policy and technology support through R&D investments.

Interestingly, Dr. Lamberte observes that a critical key that got families out of poverty in her various case stories was the presence of an enterprising and persevering woman within the family or household. Weaker sex? Think again. –Cielito Habito, Philippine Daily Inquirer