Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Poverty - Philippines'

This thesis constructs a detailed anatomy of poverty in Metropolitan Manila, Philippines, by critically examining and comparing a) the government's official statistics, b) alternatives to the official statistics offered by NGOs and academic researchers, and c) the results of an original household survey carried out in PNR Bangkal, one of Manila's many informal settlements. The research seeks to develop a more appropriate, multidimensional and participatory concept of poverty for Manila than the purely money-metric approach applied by the government. The official methodology results in very low, falling, and seemingly unrealistic poverty levels for this Southeast Asian megacity with its attendant problems. According to official statistics, poverty dropped from 23% of families in 1985 to 7.1% in 1997. The thesis raises questions about the assumptions that inform these measures. For example, the official surveys do not include in their sample people without official and permanent residence. As they tend to reside in informal settlements, the poorest are thus almost certainly excluded. Highlighting the multidimensional nature of deprivation, the primary research in PNR Bangkal was based on a combination of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of poverty. Questionnaires were completed for 155 households, or one third of the population of the settlement. These were then followed by in-depth qualitative interviews with five respondents in order to enrich the survey data. The study included but went beyond income and expenditure analysis. The survey results were analysed using an asset vulnerability framework. Findings include an 'official' poverty incidence of 36% of families and a self-perceived poverty incidence of 79%. The survey also revealed high levels of deprivation and vulnerability related to labour, housing, human capital, and social capital.

This thesis examined student knowledge about the nature, scope, causes and responses to poverty, student perceptions of the emphasis in the school curricula on poverty and development, student attitudes to poverty and the factors that influence such knowledge and attitudes. Knowledge and attitudes at the end of primary school were compared with those after four years of secondary school in three nations, Australia. The Philippines and Zimbabwe, involving 1296 surveys and 188 interviews. The investigation draws on earlier work in Ireland (Regan, 1996). and is a response to the recent emphasis on the role of schools in development education in Europe (Lemmers, 2001) and the call for a greater emphasis in Australia on this area (Simons. Hart and WTalsh, 1997). The survey compared student understanding with current 'knowledge' in the literature and the interview allowed an examination of the stories students constructed about people in poverty, including their cognitive and affective responses to people in poverty. Results showed that whilst almost all students recognised that poverty exists, they were more likely to define it simply as a lack of income than as a phenomenon involving social power and self esteem. Few students were aware that the majority of the world's poor are female. Nationality was an important predictor of student knowledge and values. Australian students considered nationally based causes (e.g., government, education) to be more important than personal qualities (e.g., laziness) or international causes (e.g., powerful countries). Australian students were also more likely to value hedonism, but it could not be demonstrated conclusively that this affected the ways that they defined poverty and its causes. Filipino students were more likely to perceive poverty as being the fault of the person experiencing poverty and were more pejorative towards the poor. Whilst Filipino and Zimbabwean students considered that they had learnt a lot about poverty, few Australian students thought this to be the case. Students in senior secondary school were not well informed of current understandings about poverty and development and did not possess a significantly greater knowledge than primary school students on these matters. Specifically. current school practices allow students to perceive poverty as primarily income related and do not place due emphasis on internationally related causes.

La tesi intende analizzare i nessi tra politiche di investimento in capitale umano e sviluppo, attraverso il caso specifico delle Filippine. Alla luce dei risultati del caso paese la tesi suggerisce come la teoria classica sul capitale umano sia ancora valida nel panorama odierno nelle sue affermazioni di base. Alcuni fenomeni globali tuttavia richiedano una rivisitazione della teoria classica ed introducono nuove variabili nello studio dell'efficacia ed efficienza degli investimenti in capitale umano. Nel caso specifico delle Filippine, la tesi si sofferma sull'evoluzione storica delle politiche sul capitale umano nel paese, raggiungendo l'obiettivo di analizzarle in relazione alla crescita economica, la riduzione della poverta' e poi, in modo piu' specifico, misurando i ritorni a livello individuale e pubblico sugli investimenti fatti in capitale umano dal 1974. Il ruolo del governo emerge come fattore critico nel guidare le politiche di sviluppo del paese.<br>The relationship between human capital policies and development is analyzed through a case study of the Philippines. The case study evidences the validity of the principal assumptions of classical human capital theory. Emerging global issues, however, point to the need for introducing new factors and variables in the study of human capital policies and development, in order to assess their efficiency. In the case of the Philippines, the evolution of human capital policies in the country is assessed since 1974. The analysis shows the relationship between human capital and economic growth, poverty reduction and public and private returns on investments in human capital, identifying the role of government as a critical factor in leading national development.

There is much said about how to support a client as a social worker. Much is based on the country's politics, structure, organization, norms, but also on the values, knowledge, and responsiveness of social workers. When a country is exposed to poverty, social work takes a certain kind of shape and direction based on several viewpoints. The world has its eyes on developing countries with many poverty reduction recommendations, but how do social workers, living and working in a country with high poverty, express their reality?                       This study aims to, in a Philippine context, examine professional social workers perception of poverty and identify their approach to poverty alleviation and clients living in poverty. A qualitative study, with eight semi-structured interviews was hold plus one group interview including two respondents. All respondents were professional social workers that worked with poverty reduction in various ways. The thematic analysis was made with the framework of Human Development and Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach theory. The result shows that the efforts to reduce poverty in the Philippines require long-term thinking where respondents' mostly have the task of changing communities and clients' values. The respondents’ perceptions of poverty is that it is a condition that can be changed as long as the individual living in poverty makes active choices. The conclusions show that the major approach the respondents have, is to work with clients potentials and mindset by aware them to see what they actually can do for themselves. Almost all of the respondents use their own background as a motivator to support clients out of poverty and they approach their clients with patience, attention, belonging, and love, which can lead to minimizing obstacles that may be in the way of increasing the well-being of clients. On the other hand, the results show that it is the individual's responsibility to change his or her situation and a common perception among the respondents' is that education is the key to reduce poverty.

This thesis examines the challenges faced by the ministers of religion in Churches of Christ (Restoration Movement) in Bicol, Philippines. The goal is to do theology from below, not from above, as pastoral ministry must come from the experience of those who practice it, not from textbooks. The pastoral perspectives of the dilemmas that the ministers raise are heard, observed, documented, and then reflected upon. To do this, case studies of four preachers are used and the mga problema that they present are explored with them. As a result, first, I introduce some of those challenges which are perplexing on the ground level and which appear to be under-researched in serious theological circles, especially in an Asian context. Second, I hope that these case studies can be used to stimulate reflection in ministerial and spiritual formation. Third, I document some of the theology and methodology of the Churches of Christ, particularly as practiced in the Philippines. Chapter 1 explores the dichotomy between the perceived satisfaction in the pastoral ministry with the crisis of role and identity. In particular, issues such as forced exits and stress are presented while baptism and preaching are scrutinized. Chapter 2 centres on the conundrums experienced in planting a new church and being the lone planter. Chapter 3 examines three challenges–the task of ministering in a home congregation, the issue of accreditation in ministerial training, and how the minister can be a success and grow the church. Never far from the thoughts and actions of any of the Bicolano ministers is the problema of poverty, so Chapter 4 considers some of the Filipino, personal, and spiritual complexities of poverty, delineates a number of factors that need to be taken into consideration in any effort to overcome this malady and concludes with a particular reference to ministry.

Cette thèse propose une analyse de certaines des politiques considérées actuellement comme étant des éléments-clé de toute stratégie de développement, avec l’objectif de contribuer au récent débat sur le développement international. Je considère en particulier l’élaboration, la mise en oeuvre et l’évaluation des politiques de protection sociale, de développement participatif et d’intégration régionale. Le premier chapitre repose sur l’idée que, pour être efficaces en matière de réduction de la pauvreté, les politiques de protection sociale doivent avoir pour double objectif de permettre aux ménages pauvres d’accéder à des ressources suffisantes pour satisfaire leurs besoins de base, ainsi que de réduire le risque auquel les ménages non pauvres sont confrontés de voir leur niveau de bien-être diminuer sous le seuil de pauvreté. Je propose une méthode permettant d’estimer le degré de vulnérabilité à la pauvreté des ménages. La vulnérabilité est ici définie comme la probabilité pour un ménage de se trouver sous le seuil de pauvreté dans le futur, étant données ses caractéristiques actuelles. Dans le second chapitre, je me place dans un contexte de ciblage des programmes de protection sociale par un score approximant le niveau de vie (proxy-means testing). La précision, et donc l’efficacité, de cette approche pour identifier les ménages pauvres dépendent de la capacité à prédire avec exactitude le niveau de bien-être des ménages, laquelle découle de la sélection de variables pertinentes. Je propose une méthode basée sur l’estimation d’un échantillon aléatoire de modèles de consommation, pour identifier les variables dont la corrélation avec le bien-être des ménages est à la fois élevée et robuste. Ces variables appartiennent à différentes catégories, y compris la possession de biens durables, l’accès aux services d’énergie domestique et d’assainissement, la qualité et le statut d’occupation du logement, et le niveau d’éducation des membres du ménage. Les troisième et quatrième chapitres de cette thèse proposent une analyse ex-post des politiques de développement, et portent en particulier sur les conséquences inattendues d’un programme de développement participatif et les raisons de l’insuffisante performance de politiques d’intégration régionale, respectivement. Le troisième chapitre évalue dans quelle mesure la réaction des deux groupes rebelles présents aux Philippines face à la mise en oeuvre d’un programme participatif d’aide au développement est compatible avec l’idée que ces deux groupes ont différentes idéologies, caractéristiques et raisons pour lutter contre le gouvernement. Il utilise une base de données collectées en utilisant les reportages d’un journal local concernant les épisodes de guerre impliquant ces deux groupes, ainsi que les prédictions d’un modèle d’insurrection basé sur la recherche de rente (rent-seeking). Les résultats sont conformes à la classification proposée de ces deux groupes rebelles ; leur réaction face au projet dépend de leur position idéologique. Le dernier chapitre analyse l’impact des guerres civiles en Afrique sur la performance des communautés économiques régionales, approximée par la synchronisation des cycles économiques des différents partenaires régionaux. Les résultats montrent que la synchronisation des cycles économiques diminue avec l’occurrence de guerres civiles, non seulement pour les pays directement affectés, mais également pour leurs voisins en paix<br>In this thesis, I aim to contribute to the recent international development debate, by providing an analysis of some of the policies that are considered key elements of a development strategy. Focusing on social protection, community-based development and regional integration, I consider aspects related to their design, implementation and evaluation. In the first chapter, I propose a method to estimate ex ante vulnerability to poverty, defined as the probability of being poor in the near future given one’s current characteristics. This is based on the premise that effective social protection policies should aim not only to help the poor move out of poverty, but also to protect the vulnerable from falling into it. In the second chapter, I consider the issue of identifying the poor in a context of targeting social protection programs using a Proxy-Means Testing (PMT) approach, which precision, and therefore usefulness relies on the selection of indicators that produce accurate predictions of household welfare. I propose a method based on model random sampling to identify indicators that are robustly and strongly correlated with household welfare, measured by per capita consumption. These indicators span the categories of household private asset holdings, access to basic domestic energy, education level, sanitation and housing. The third and fourth chapters of this thesis provide an ex-post analysis of development policies and focus in particular on the unintended consequences of a community-driven program and on the reasons for the lack of progress in regional economic integration. The third chapter assesses whether the reaction of the two distinct rebel groups that operate in the Philippines to the implementation of a large-scale community-driven development project funded by foreign aid is consistent with the idea that these two groups have different ideologies, characteristics and motives for fighting. It is based on a unique geo-referenced dataset that we collected from local newspaper reports on the occurrence of conflict episodes involving these rebel groups, and on the predictions of a rent-seeking model of insurgency. The findings are consistent with the proposed classification of the rebel groups; the impact of the foreign aid project on each rebel group depends on their ideological stance. In the last chapter, I analyze how civil conflicts affect the economic fate of African regional economic communities through its effect on the synchronicity of regional partners’ economies. I find that conflict decreases business cycle synchronicity when it occurs within a regional economic community, both for the directly affected countries and for their more peaceful regional peers

Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.

Masters Research - Masters of Philosophy (MPhil)<br>This thesis investigates the impact of microfinance on poverty and other key social wellbeing measures of health, education and women empowerment in Northeastern Mindanao, the Philippines. In the Philippines, poverty remains pervasive with microfinance often times remain the poor’s only access to formal financing. A review of the literature reveal that rigorous empirical studies on microfinance impact remain few, often with mixed outcomes. This suggests a need to further understand the impact of microfinance in the Philippines. To address the objectives of the study, a mixed method was employed. A one-time survey of 211 eligible households involving microfinance clients and non-clients was undertaken in both treatment and control areas. Further, a total of eight focus group discussions (FGDs) involving a random sample of clients who took part in the survey were also undertaken. Finally, a survey of key microfinance industry stakeholders via semi-structured interviews was also undertaken. The stakeholders include key government policymakers and officials, representatives from government and private financial institutions, donors, NGOs and other experts in the field. The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed using Eviews and NVivo, respectively. The study reveals the following: Firstly, a positive and mildly significant impact of microfinance on per capita income. Secondly, the participatory FGDs suggest positive impacts of microfinance on clients’ savings behaviour as well as on some social wellbeing measures of health, education and women empowerment. The Philippine microfinance industry however continues to face some key challenges, including a huge financing gap. This needs to be addressed by policymakers and other stakeholders in order for microfinance to become an effective instrument towards sustainable and more inclusive growth.

This dissertation demonstrates how ACE has successfully equipped thousands of poor Filipinos with the tools necessary for them to raise themselves out of poverty by offering them a culture-specific curriculum that they can implement in their businesses. Furthermore, it will be argued that ACE's culture-specific curriculum could theoretically be applied in Mexico, where the "culture of poverty" exists in abundance.

The poverty of the individual household is a leading cause of children engaging in work in order to contribute to household survival. The importance of children's financial contribution to the household means that in order to eliminate child labour, alternative sources of income have to be made available.<br>Microfinance is perceived to have the potential of addressing these issues by enabling households to save or borrow money to start up or expand enterprises thereby securing additional income and making children's financial contribution to a household less significant. However, while microfinance is considered a tool designed for the poor, it has been shown to have difficulties in reaching the poorest households, which is also the very group most at risk of having to rely on child labour for survival. Furthermore, the limited credit available through microfinance, and the lack of special skills frequently force entrepreneurs to engage in labour intensive activities with marginal profits. These types of activities are also where children are often found to be working.<br>Based on data collected from two urban areas in the Philippines using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this thesis reviews microfinance as a tool in targeting child labour. Specifically it analyses the extent to which microfinance contributes to a decrease or increase in child labour and whether the impact varies according to the gender of the child. The thesis also reviews the ability of microfinance to affect all households with working children, and how the findings correspond with current economic theories on the household.<br>This research shows that in the selected areas the main reasons for children engaging in economic work arise from either: the need to generate an additional income from outside the household setting, in part to cover educational and other expenses brought on by the child him or herself; or the role of children as supplier of additional labour input into labour intensive household enterprises, in particular those which are the main source of income for the household. Children, in particular girls, also frequently act as labour substitutes for the mother in household work.<br>This thesis confirms that microfinance programs have difficulties in reaching all households with child labourers. The main reasons are risk aversion among the poorest households and the apparent direct or indirect exclusion of this group by other members of the programs. The main cause of the risk aversion arises from the fear of being excluded from essential informal credit networks on which the poorest households in particular depend.<br>Microfinance has the ability to impact on households where children work to generate an extra source of income. For households which depend on children's input into the household MSE, there appear to he limited impact of microfinance participation on the households' need for child labour. There are indications that the household's ability to benefit from microfinance participation depends on its existing income level. While the aim of the microfinance programmes is to support the creation or expansion of enterprises, the intense competition and low marginal returns means that closure rates are high. As a consequence the effects of microfinance loans are often short lived. Further, microfinance loans are unable to change the labour intensive nature of the production and the household dependence on children's labour. This research also finds that the impact differs between children as there is a strong division of children's work based on gender and age.

This thesis examines the extent to which vernacular mediation, or the ongoing, sociohistorically situated, and discursive communicative acts through new media technologies, enables the cultural participation and emancipation of marginal groups. It investigates how the Ethnolinguistic group Karay‐a appropriated the Internet and digital music and video production technologies to reinvent their stereotyped identities, develop collectivity, and work towards the goal of bringing socioeconomic emancipation to their homeland of Antique in Western Philippines. By following a cultural studies approach to examine three cases of vernacular mediation, this thesis aims to explore how the dialogical interaction of new media technologies, audience or individual agency, institutional logics, and asymmetries in power enable and shape a specific emancipatory aim without foreclosing their future potentials. Through an analysis of the musical subgenre Original Kinaray‐a Music (OKM), the online community kinaray‐a.com, and the digital short film Handum produced by the marginal group, this thesis argues that vernacular mediation practices have the potential to facilitate cultural participation by enabling expressions and meanings to be reshaped and shared. The sharing of meanings adds to the social and cultural capitals of marginal individuals and enables them to forge social ties. These ties can lead to collective mobilization. However, the extent to which these actions challenge prevailing power structures and bring social emancipation depends too on the amount of capitals they possess vis a vis those who hold power in their milieu, the involvement of the majority, and the ability to innovate and adapt to their present needs.<br>Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2013.