On Feb. 20, 2016, the World Bank approved a $450 million conditional cash transfer (CCT) to the Philippine anti-poverty program, Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4PS).

Five months earlier at a conference held in Cebu entitled “Global Economic and Financial Outlook, Growing Inequality and Regional Connectivity,” the World Bank’s Vice President Axel van Trotsenburg advocated for the bolstering of the region’s CTT program to set higher education, health and nutrition standards.

“Primary and secondary education systems should increasingly focus on quality teaching and better learning outcomes, by strengthening the autonomy and accountability of educational institutions,” he said, according to a World Bank press release. He called for dramatic government attention towards Filipinos currently living below the minimum wage, almost 800 million people.

Since it was founded in 2008, 4PS has worked to provide poor Filipinos with greater access to healthcare, adequate nutrition and education. In partnership with the Commission on Higher Education, the Department of Labor and Employment and the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges, 4PS allocates funds into two types of cash grants: health and education.

The grants are distributed to beneficiaries—pending a family’s qualification—through the Land Bank of the Philippines. The cash grants can reach up to a maximum of P1,400.00 (1,400 pesos) per household, or roughly 18 percent of a family’s expenses, depending on size and need. For this reason, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) assures that these benefit amounts effectively boost community development without fostering dependency.

The role of 4PS has been tenuous, but ultimately effective. In 2012, The Philippine Institute for Development Studies published a research discussion paper, written by Celia M. Reyes and Aubrey D. Tabuga, detailing the history, implementation and progress of the program since its rollout four years earlier. The study brought to light several key issues in the program’s early stages and the ways in which the CTT would best serve a population of both transient and chronically impoverished benefactors.

Four years later, necessary considerations have been taken to ensure a multi-dimensional approach in decreasing the nation’s poor populations.

The number of beneficiaries, for example, have increased nearly every year since the CTT’s inception, from 2.3 million in 2011 to 3.93 million in 2013, to over 4 million in August 2015. This is largely due to consideration of supply-side allocations—improving health facilities and providing jobs—and a more detailed process of beneficiary selection.

Ultimately, 4PS is an influential program because of its long-term payoff. Its specific focus on health and education in children provides a spectrum of disadvantaged citizens with subsistence aid, while also undoing a poverty cycle present in the country’s chronically poor.

In 2013, AusAID consultant Dr. Tarcisio Castaneda surveyed the program’s progress, both in its hard data and on-the-ground effects. In an interview with Southeast Asian news source, Rappler, he commented that the program could prove to be an example for other countries.

With 82 percent of its benefits going to the bottom 40 percent of the population, according to the World Bank, 4PS is a strong Philippine anti-poverty measure. One worthy, the World Bank confirms, of its generous funding.

— Nora Harless

Sources: GovPH Official Gazette, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, Philippine Statistics Authority, Rappler, Reuters, USAID, The World Bank
Photo: Thomson Reuters Foundation