debate on the controversial and according to some, divisive, reproductive health (RH) bill rages on. even the people's champ, manny pacquiao is more than willing to become the church's poster boy to oppose this bill. i admire pacquiao's sporting achievements but he should just do a lito lapid and avoid dabbling on issues he clearly doesn't understand and stop making pronouncements like, "Go out to the world and multiply". while he's in congress, that doesn't necessarily mean he needs to engage in intelligent discourse. he just needs to listen and vote according to his conscience... exactly what lito lapid does.
as senator miriam santiago pointed out: "Pacquiao was said to be quoting the Bible saying, ‘Go out to the world and multiply.’ First, may I just, since he is just a legislator, make a point of information, may I just make a point of grammar please? The Bible does not say, ‘Go out to the world.’ It sounds very much like God is encouraging us to go out and copulate in public. God said in the Bible, ‘Go forth and multiply." some key points below.
PRO
The Philippines's population growth rate is 2.04 (2007 Census), 1.957% (2010 est. by CIA World Fact Book), or 1.85% (2005-2010 high variant estimate by the UN Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision) coming from 3.1 in 1960. The 2010 total fertility rate (TFR) is 3.23 births per woman, from a TFR of 7 in 1960.[36] In addition, the total fertility rate for the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, which is about one third the TFR of the poorest quintile (5.9 children per woman). The TFR for women with college education is 2.3, about half that of women with only an elementary education (4.5 children per woman).
Congressman Lagman states that the bill "recognizes the verifiable link between a huge population and poverty. Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty."
The University of the Philippines' School of Economics presented two papers in support of the bill: Population and Poverty: the Real Score (2004), and Population, Poverty, Politics and the Reproductive Health Bill (2008). According to these economists, which include Solita Monsod, Gerardo Sicat, Cayetano Paderanga, Ernesto M. Pernia, and Stella Alabastro-Quimbo, "rapid population growth and high fertility rates, especially among the poor, do exacerbate poverty and make it harder for the government to address it," while at the same time clarifying that it would be "extreme" to view "population growth as the principal cause of poverty that would justify the government resorting to draconian and coercive measures to deal with the problem (e.g., denial of basic services and subsidies to families with more than two children)." They illustrate the connection between rapid population growth and poverty by comparing the economic growth and population growth rates of Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, wherein the first two grew more rapidly than the Philippines due to lower population growth rates. They stressed that "the experience from across Asia indicates that a population policy cum government-funded [family planning] program has been a critical complement to sound economic policy and poverty reduction."
In Population and Poverty, Aniceto Orbeta, Jr, showed that poverty incidence is higher among big families: 57.3% of Filipino families with seven children are in poverty while only 23.8% of families who have two children live below the poverty threshold.
Percentage of population living below poverty line (2003). Darker areas mean more poverty.Proponents argue that smaller families and wider birth intervals resulting from the use of contraceptives allow families to invest more in each child’s education, health, nutrition and eventually reduce poverty and hunger at the household level.[9] At the national level, fertility reduction cuts the cost of social services with fewer people attending school or seeking medical care and as demand eases for housing, transportation, jobs, water, food and other natural resources. The Asian Development Bank in 2004 also listed a large population as one of the major causes of poverty in the country, together with weak macroeconomic management, employment issues, an underperforming agricultural sector and an unfinished land reform agenda, governance issues including corruption.
ANTI
Opposing the bill, Former Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo wrote that it is "truly disingenuous for anyone to proceed on the premise that the poor are to blame for the nation’s poverty." He emphasized that the government should apply the principle of first things first and focus on the root causes of the poverty (e.g. poor governance, corruption) and apply many other alternatives to solve the problem (e.g. giving up pork barrel, raising tax collection efficiency). They also point to the five factors for high economic growth and reduction of poverty shown by the 2008 Commission on Growth and Development headed by Nobel prize winner Michael Spence, which does not include population control.
Opponents also refer to a 2003 Rand Corporation study which concluded that "there is little cross-country evidence that population growth impedes or promotes economic growth...population neutralism has in fact been the predominant school in thinking among academics about population growth for the last half-century." In his Primer which critiques the bill, Economist Roberto de Vera refers to Nobel prize winner Simon Kuznets's study which concludes that “no clear association appears to exist in the present sample of countries, or is likely to exist in other developed countries, between rates of growth of population and of product per capita." Julian Simon compared parallel countries such as North and South Korea, East and West Germany whose birthrates were practically the same but whose economic growth was entirely different due to different governance factors. De Vera says that "similar conclusions have been arrived at by the US National Research Council in 1986 and in the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Consultative Meeting of Economists in 1992" and the studies of Hanushek and Wommann (2007), Doppelhoffer, Miller, Sala-I-Martin (2004), Ahlburg (1996), etc. The other Nobel Prize winner who expressed the same view is Gary Becker.
De Vera also states that from 1961–2000, as Philippine population increased almost three times, poverty decreased from 59% to 34%. He stressed that the more probable cause of poor families is not family size but the limited schooling of the household head: 78% to 90% of the poor households had heads with no high school diploma, preventing them from getting good paying jobs. He refers to studies which show that 90% of the time the poor want the children they have: as helpers in the farm and investment for a secure old age.
Instead of aiming at population decrease, De Vera stressed that the country should focus through education on cashing in on a possible “demographic dividend,” a period of rapid economic growth that can happens when the labor force is growing faster than the dependents (children and elderly), thus reducing poverty significantly.
PRO
The Philippines's population growth rate is 2.04 (2007 Census), 1.957% (2010 est. by CIA World Fact Book), or 1.85% (2005-2010 high variant estimate by the UN Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision) coming from 3.1 in 1960. The 2010 total fertility rate (TFR) is 3.23 births per woman, from a TFR of 7 in 1960.[36] In addition, the total fertility rate for the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, which is about one third the TFR of the poorest quintile (5.9 children per woman). The TFR for women with college education is 2.3, about half that of women with only an elementary education (4.5 children per woman).Congressman Lagman states that the bill "recognizes the verifiable link between a huge population and poverty. Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty."
The University of the Philippines' School of Economics presented two papers in support of the bill: Population and Poverty: the Real Score (2004), and Population, Poverty, Politics and the Reproductive Health Bill (2008). According to these economists, which include Solita Monsod, Gerardo Sicat, Cayetano Paderanga, Ernesto M. Pernia, and Stella Alabastro-Quimbo, "rapid population growth and high fertility rates, especially among the poor, do exacerbate poverty and make it harder for the government to address it," while at the same time clarifying that it would be "extreme" to view "population growth as the principal cause of poverty that would justify the government resorting to draconian and coercive measures to deal with the problem (e.g., denial of basic services and subsidies to families with more than two children)." They illustrate the connection between rapid population growth and poverty by comparing the economic growth and population growth rates of Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, wherein the first two grew more rapidly than the Philippines due to lower population growth rates. They stressed that "the experience from across Asia indicates that a population policy cum government-funded [family planning] program has been a critical complement to sound economic policy and poverty reduction."
In Population and Poverty, Aniceto Orbeta, Jr, showed that poverty incidence is higher among big families: 57.3% of Filipino families with seven children are in poverty while only 23.8% of families who have two children live below the poverty threshold.
Percentage of population living below poverty line (2003). Darker areas mean more poverty.Proponents argue that smaller families and wider birth intervals resulting from the use of contraceptives allow families to invest more in each child’s education, health, nutrition and eventually reduce poverty and hunger at the household level.[9] At the national level, fertility reduction cuts the cost of social services with fewer people attending school or seeking medical care and as demand eases for housing, transportation, jobs, water, food and other natural resources. The Asian Development Bank in 2004 also listed a large population as one of the major causes of poverty in the country, together with weak macroeconomic management, employment issues, an underperforming agricultural sector and an unfinished land reform agenda, governance issues including corruption.
ANTI
Opposing the bill, Former Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo wrote that it is "truly disingenuous for anyone to proceed on the premise that the poor are to blame for the nation’s poverty." He emphasized that the government should apply the principle of first things first and focus on the root causes of the poverty (e.g. poor governance, corruption) and apply many other alternatives to solve the problem (e.g. giving up pork barrel, raising tax collection efficiency). They also point to the five factors for high economic growth and reduction of poverty shown by the 2008 Commission on Growth and Development headed by Nobel prize winner Michael Spence, which does not include population control.Opponents also refer to a 2003 Rand Corporation study which concluded that "there is little cross-country evidence that population growth impedes or promotes economic growth...population neutralism has in fact been the predominant school in thinking among academics about population growth for the last half-century." In his Primer which critiques the bill, Economist Roberto de Vera refers to Nobel prize winner Simon Kuznets's study which concludes that “no clear association appears to exist in the present sample of countries, or is likely to exist in other developed countries, between rates of growth of population and of product per capita." Julian Simon compared parallel countries such as North and South Korea, East and West Germany whose birthrates were practically the same but whose economic growth was entirely different due to different governance factors. De Vera says that "similar conclusions have been arrived at by the US National Research Council in 1986 and in the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Consultative Meeting of Economists in 1992" and the studies of Hanushek and Wommann (2007), Doppelhoffer, Miller, Sala-I-Martin (2004), Ahlburg (1996), etc. The other Nobel Prize winner who expressed the same view is Gary Becker.
De Vera also states that from 1961–2000, as Philippine population increased almost three times, poverty decreased from 59% to 34%. He stressed that the more probable cause of poor families is not family size but the limited schooling of the household head: 78% to 90% of the poor households had heads with no high school diploma, preventing them from getting good paying jobs. He refers to studies which show that 90% of the time the poor want the children they have: as helpers in the farm and investment for a secure old age.
Instead of aiming at population decrease, De Vera stressed that the country should focus through education on cashing in on a possible “demographic dividend,” a period of rapid economic growth that can happens when the labor force is growing faster than the dependents (children and elderly), thus reducing poverty significantly.
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