Bald men or battleships?

An interesting – and, despite its serious content, amusing — duel has developed between Rigoberto Tiglao and Dr. Bernardo Villegas in the pages of the Inquirer. Initially, rather than either mentioning the other’s name, they were like two battleships exchanging salvos from either side of the horizon.

Tiglao opened the exchange on Aug. 12 with a column entitled “There are 100 million of us now” in which he complained: “It is amazing how a few top-notch economists, particularly those belonging to the Vatican’s vanguard, Opus Dei, can still argue in this day and age that there is no connection between population growth rates and economic well-being.”

Economist? Opus Dei? Who fits that description?

On Sept. 25, Villegas, (economist and Opus Dei member) fired off “The Philippine population is not exploding.” This contained a reference to “ignorant journalists or commentators who talk about an exploding population.” Now who could that possibly be?

Villegas is of the view that the government cooks the books and that population-growth has already slowed considerably. He actually thinks it’s worrisome that the average number of children per woman has (or so he thought) declined to 2.96. Curiously, though, this figure comes from the National Statistical Coordinating Board, which Villegas now cites (or rather misinterprets) as an authority, having earlier accused it of “statistical abracadabra.”

Villegas’ article seems to have first seen the light of day in the Manila Bulletin on Sept. 20, where it bore the title “Population Statistics are Being Doctored.” Two days later, i.e. three days before the article was resurrected in the Inquirer, the NSCB posted a response on its Web site. This pointed out that the NSCB, rather than tampering with the 2000 census results as suggested by Villegas, had added 146,582 to the zero to one year age group in order to arrive at “2000-based population projections,” having earlier found that there had been “an undernumeration of the population aged 0-4 years. As observed in most countries, the population below age 1 is the most undernumerated.”

Moreover, the NSCB, its sense of professionalism clearly outraged, emphasized that “the use of adjustment factors for the base population for projections is an internationally accepted practice among demographers, including those of the United Nations Population Division…” Even Villegas’ use of the fertility-rate mentioned above came in for a hammering, the NSCB pointing out that, rather than having been achieved, this was a projection for the years 2010-2015, subject to certain conditions being met. It seems a shame that the Inquirer was (presumably) unaware of the NSCB’s rebuttal, because it could have used this on Sept. 25 rather than reprinting Villegas’s original (and badly flawed) piece.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the horizon… The day after the NSCB response was posted, Tiglao fired off another salvo in the Inquirer, entitled “Why many Filipinos are poor: WB’s latest report (Part 1).” Yes, he had called in reinforcements in the form of the World Bank. A stroke of genius or what? Just imagine calling upon the church of neoliberal economics to do battle with the economically neoliberal (but socially ultraconservative) Villegas!

Growth, says the Bank’s “The Philippines: Fostering More Inclusive Growth,” has not led to poverty-reduction, and a major reason for this is population growth. While, between 2001 and 2007, employment grew by 13 percent, the population of working age grew by 17.6 percent. Supply running ahead of demand, the price of labor was driven down, in real terms, by 5 percent. Thus, says Tiglao, by its opposition to modern methods of contraception the Catholic Church “continues to be an agent for Filipinos’ impoverishment.”

In truth, however, Tiglao was firing at a different set of targets on this occasion – the “noisy gang of leftist clerics and militants” who, according to him, claim there is a conspiracy by government and capitalists to exploit the poor. Having dispensed with the clerics in this first article, the insurgents were to be tackled in a second which, as of this writing, has yet to appear; instead, Tiglao’s Sept. 30 column used the NSCB material to give Villegas another going-over, this time naming his opponent.

Regular readers will, perhaps, realize that this outsider agrees with Tiglao on the role of the church. However, Villegas comes close to hitting the target when he says that the main factors in the decrease in the fertility-rate (which he deplores) are “urbanization, later marriages, and increased education of women.” Close, but still off-target.

These factors are themselves the result of development, which has yet to arrive in the Philippines. The rates of poverty and fertility in, say, Holland or England in earlier centuries, or Japan and South Korea over the past few decades, were not reduced by the dissemination of condoms but by development (following which, many people nowadays choose to use contraceptives). In the absence of development, urbanization achieves little, hence the fact that the slums of Metro Manila are often referred to as “baby factories.” A reproductive health bill is necessary here because development has not been able to do its job.

Neither Villegas nor Tiglao has yet mentioned national industrialization. Villegas, we know from his previous writings, takes the bizarre view that Philippine development was stunted by the activity of economic nationalists during the era of import-substitution. Tiglao, in the second of the columns referred to above, expresses the view that the World Bank’s latest list of “to-dos” might be “a good blueprint for President Aquino’s reform programs.” In which case, of course, the Philippines would continue to be an impoverished subcontractor for transnational corporations, albeit one with improved infrastructure and tax collection.

If neither of our contestants is prepared to confront the question of industrialization they will, if their argument continues, be less like two battleships and more like two bald men fighting over a comb. –Ken Fuller, Daily Tribune

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