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Chapter II

REVIEW RELATED LITERATURE

Development of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program

Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s nine-year term saw the birth and

growth of one of her foremost anti-poverty programs- The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino

Program popularly known as 4Ps. Pantawid Pamilya is a conditional cash transfer

program that provides incentives for poor families to invest in their future by ensuring

that mothers and children avail of healthcare and children go to school. It is a human

development program of the national government that invest in health and education of

poor households, particularly of children aged 0-14 years old.

Objectives of the Program

1. Social Assistance: provide cash assistance to address the short term financial

need.

2. Social Development: by investing in capability building they will be able to

break intergenerational poverty cycle.

Coverage of 4Ps

The number of beneficiary household enrolled in 4Ps grew from less than

800,000 in 2010 to 4.4 million in 2015 covering 17 regions, 79 provinces, and 1,484

municipalities and 143 key cities. The budget allocation likewise increased from ₱10

billion in 2010 to about ₱62.7 billion in 2016, making the 4Ps easily the centrepiece

program of the P-Noy presidency. This year, the program seeks to enlist another

200,000 household belonging to the “near poor.”

Criteria for Eligibility

The beneficiaries of the program are the poorest household as determined by

the use of the Proxy Means Test (PMT). Eligible households are those that have been

found to meet the following criteria: are located in the municipalities and barangays

selected for the Pantawid Pamilya Program. Poor families belonging on the top 20

poorest provinces in the country and top 100 poorest municipalities who have children

0-18 years old or a pregnant mother. Economic indicators such as, ownership of assets,

type of housing, education of the household head, livelihood of the family, and access

to water and sanitation facilities are proxy variables to indicate family economic

category which make them unqualified as beneficiaries of the program. Household

whose economic condition is equal to or below the provincial poverty threshold are

qualified to the criteria needed.

Conditions of Eligible Beneficiary

In order to receive subsidies, all the succeeding conditions must be met by the

household beneficiaries. 4Ps condition on school grants include children’s school

enrolment and class attendance rate of at least 85%. For health grants, the conditions

are regular health clinic visits for immunization. It also requires parents to attend

Family Development Sessions (FDS). In these sessions, beneficiaries discuss and learn

about family planning, development of good family relationships, livelihood, good

citizenship, health education, financial literacy, children education, and other family

issues. Pregnant women must avail pre- and post-natal care and be attended during child

birth by a trained

professional.
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Receive Subsidies

A household with three qualified children receives a subsidy of P 1,400/ month

during the school months or P15, 000 for the whole year for as long as they comply

with the conditionality’s set by the program. The amount of grants that they would be

receiving depends upon their compliance to the conditions. Beneficiaries receive their

cash grants through different modes of payments such as Over-the-counter (OTC),

offsite, Cash Card, and G-Cash Remit.

At the same time, the cash grants lessen current poverty by providing immediate

relief from cash flow problems. Such extra cash received a bimonthly basis is especially

important for poor households that have irregular or seasonal income.

Advantages of 4Ps

CCT programs addresses both future poverty, by fostering human capital

accumulation among the young as means of breaking the intergenerational transmission

of poverty by providing income support for consumption in the short run (Rawlings &

Rubio, 2005). The main objective of the 4Ps is to prevent cycle of poverty by providing

funds to citizens in order for them to send their children to school and health

maintenance check-ups. There is ample research that shows severe malnutrition that

results young ones to have hard time learning because the only thing they think of is

their hunger. Healthy, educated children ultimately have more choices in life and are

able to become productive members of society (Bloom, 2008). The implementation of

the 4Ps lessens the incidence of child labor and other forms of child abuse. In cases of

the other CCT programs implemented in other countries, there are two interrelated

mechanisms found to help combat-child labor. First, through their cash subsidy

component, schooling’s directs costs are reduced, thereby inducing families to send

their children to school. Second, these programs require families to have their children
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attend school, 85% of the school days per month in the case of the 4Ps, in exchange to

cash subsidy. This requirement increases the time of children spend in school and

reduce the time they can allocate to work (Gee, 2010). There is a noticeable increase in

the number of enrolees in many elementary school in areas included in the scope of

4Ps, and kindergarten classes were being established to answer the need of the

community in compliance to the condition of sending 0-5 years old children in day care

centers and pre-schools (DSWD, 2009). The 4Ps as well as the CCT programs, aims to

establish social equality and mobility through education. Sen and Dreze incorporate the

notion of inequality and social exclusion as obstacles for the construction of a system

of rights and opportunities. People are poor not just because of lack of economic

resources to satisfy basic needs, but also because they live in a social, economic, and

political system which does not provide the basis for this much needed equality by

providing the poor people with the education that they could not access otherwise.

Malnutrition, which is prevalent among extremely poor families, is also expected to

decrease. Since it is a prime requirement for beneficiaries to avail of the health services

being offered in their health centers such as pre- and post-natal services, vaccination,

and periodical check-ups before acquiring their money grants, the health and nutrition

of the poor families are safeguarded.

Disadvantages of 4Ps

One of the most crucial characteristic of the 4Ps and other CCT programs

implemented in other countries is its being a “demand-side” intervention instead of

“supply-side” intervention. In order to be considered as a beneficiary of the program,

one must concede with the government’s demands and conditionalities (Coady &

Parker, 2002). This is a remarkably notable in the conditions concerning education and

health services where the beneficiaries being brought into the education and health
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services system instead of expanding the education and health systems in order to reach

them. The 4Ps will also encounter some difficulties in achieving support from the social

classes, mainly because it does not benefit middle-income groups which have also been

steadily affected by limited universal services and decreases in employment (Cuesta,

2007). These middle-income groups are also suffering from issues of poverty and

limited access to educational and health benefits, but is not included in the target

population of the 4Ps. The 4Ps is programmed to help only the extremely poor. It

requires a huge amount of finance which causes tighten budgets from the government.

Arguments against the 4Ps point out that despite the large amounts of financial

resources needed to implement the program; it does not generate guaranteed returns to

the economy as much as infrastructure projects like construction of roads, bridges, and

railways.