Summary and Policy Implications

The paper set out to document the relationship between family size, poverty and vulnerability to poverty. It used cross-tabulation analyses and buttressed these with results from careful multivariate analyses done by the author. There are several conclusions that one can make from the evidence presented. One, there is a clear negative impact, on average, of additional children on household welfare. Two, and more importantly, these negative impacts are regressive, i.e. the negative impacts on poorer households are bigger. Three, the associations between larger family size, poverty incidence and vulnerability to poverty are strong and enduring.

The multivariate analyses have shown that additional children, on average, cause a substantial decline in household savings rates and levels, reduce the work participation and wage income of mothers, have no impact on the labor force participation of fathers, and reduce the proportion of school-age children attending school. These estimates were achieved after carefully controlling for the usual individual, household and community factors that are known to affect these relationships. Estimates on the differential impact of additional children across income classes were also provided. These estimates showed the regressive effect additional children have on household welfare. Additional children have bigger negative impacts on school attendance of all school-age children and the regressiveness rises as one goes to higher schooling levels. Additional children have negative impacts on the labor force participation of mothers from the bottom three quintiles and have a positive effect only for the top two quintiles. Additional children have no effect on the labor force participation of fathers from the poorest quintiles, but have a small positive effect only for the upper four quintiles. Additional children have negative effects on the earnings of mothers from the bottom two quintiles and have positive effects only for the upper three quintiles. Additional children have a negative impact on the earnings of fathers from the poorest quintile and a positive effect only for the upper four quintiles. Additional children have negative effect on the savings rates of the poorest quintile and a positive effect only for the upper four quintiles. Finally, additional children have a negative effect on the savings levels for all households except for the poorest quintile.

Cross-tabulation evidence also shows that families are not able to maintain per capita income, per capita expenditures and per capita savings as family size increase. The tables show that families are also not able to maintain per capita expenditure on human capital as family size increases. Finally, the tables show that as family size increase school attendance declines and child labor rises.

This paper has also shown the strong and enduring link between poverty incidence and vulnerability to poverty and family size. It has shown that larger family size is associated with higher poverty incidence, gap and severity. This association is also shown to be enduring over 25 years for which family income and expenditure data is available. It has also shown that larger family size is associated with higher vulnerability to poverty.

These results have several implications for efforts at poverty reduction – the centerpiece program of many Philippine administrations without much success (Reyes 2002). Many attributed this lack of success to low and inconsistent growth rates (e.g. Balisacan 2000). This paper adds large family size as an obvious, but not well-understood reason, not only for the low and inconsistent economic growth rates but also for direct debilitating effects on many aspects of household welfare. The results of this paper points to several implications for policy.

First, a strong population program must accompany poverty alleviation efforts. In the short run, this may come in the form of providing family planning services for those who need them. In the long run, this may include advocacy for smaller family size. The negative impact of large family size on household savings pointed out in this study has both a macroeconomic impact and a household impact. Larger family size reduces household savings contributing to the already low national savings. This hampers investment particularly in an environment where foreign direct investment is not high, as is observed in the Philippines. This is particularly important, since for the Philippines growth is still the main engine for poverty reduction (e.g., Balisacan and Pernia 2003, Reyes 2002, Balisacan 2000). In addition to the macroeconomic effect, lower savings also exposes larger households more to the adverse effects of income shortfalls compared to smaller households. Unless something can be done quickly to improve the lackluster performance and limited coverage of the Philippine social security system reduction in family size will be important as an alternative to a formal safety net. It has also been shown that having additional children prevents mothers from taking up work preventing them from contributing to household income. In addition, it has been shown that fathers are not encouraged to take up work because of additional children. Having additional children has also prevented more school-age children from attending school and has sent more of them to child labor. Finally, from the perspective of development measured in terms of capabilities (Sen 1980), helping families achieve their desired family size directly increases their well being all other things constant (Herrin 2002). This is particularly important because it has been shown that poorer households, which are also shown here to have larger family size, have a higher unmet need for family planning (Orbeta et al. 2004).

Second, there is a limit to what employment generation programs, assuming this could be done, can do for large families. Additional children, as the results in this study show, hinder mothers from taking on employment, particularly, paid employment. In addition, the study has not shown that additional children encourage more fathers to take on work except for those from higher income households.

Third, there is a need to stop the implied intergenerational transmission of poverty indicated by the negative impact of the number of children on school attendance. Perhaps some education subsidies directed at large families could be crafted. Education is long acknowledged as one of the potent means for moving out of poverty and more recently has also been found to be important in reducing vulnerability to poverty (e.g. Laigon and Schechter 2003). The study shows that larger families have prevented school-age children from attending school and sending children to work instead. While it can be argued that child labor may help finance education (e.g., Suryahadi, Priyambada and, Sumarto 2005), it has not been shown that this does not hamper a student’s performance in school or reduce a child’s leisure – both causing a reduction in their well being. In addition, since school performance is a good determinant of retention, working children may not stay long in school after all. The design of the subsidies should, of course, consider their potential behavioral effects, i.e. encouraging families to have more children. Considerations, such as giving subsidies to families with completed family sizes or to those who effectively promise to stop bearing any more children, should be included in the design.

Fourth, targeting poor households also means targeting large households and viceversa. In addition, considering the regressiveness of the impact of additional children, there will be bigger impacts by targeting poorer or larger households.

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Comment(s)

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1. Edgar
   (posted 01 August 2007 / 03:06:59 AM)
   
   I haven't really exhaustively read the discussion paper, just breezed through, so I might sound unfair, but I am now old enough to be highly distrustful of kneejerk reactions and conventional wisdom that suggest population is largely causative of family poverty. Has there not been enough research that large scale asset reform in highly skewed income distributive countries such as the Philippines is needed to industrialize a population and as a side effect put more females in the smokestack workforce? And this industrialization will lead to more families involuntarily spacing births? Come on, address land ownership first and produce indigenous jobs, rather than depending on migrant employment to create a surplus. Be more critical of theories that population is a major contributory factor to poverty.
2. krisjoy
   (posted 22 March 2007 / 03:27:52 PM)
   
   It's not enough to just be aware that we are poor. Since the government posted ambitious poverty reduction targets, then the average 'juan' will continue to think rice is special for more years. I think what we need is to work as a nation, achieving realistic marks for developments in agriculture, land reform, population planning, security issues, among others. I am young and I am earning; however, I feel very poor seeing that many of my fellowmen do not eat rice and that the tax I religiously pay does not get to projects.
3. MARIONNE
   (posted 06 March 2007 / 10:38:21 AM)
   
   poverty is a very hard opponent. if we want to have even a wee bit of development in our poor country, the government must see to it that poverty is lessened.
   tnx...
4. Junior
   (posted 01 March 2007 / 09:05:08 PM)
   
   In our country corruption is the number one cause of poverty thanks.
5. john
   (posted 11 July 2006 / 05:43:07 PM)
   
   Yes! It is evident here in the philippines
   because, as we can see now it is our problem ....thats all.