40% of elderly Filipinos without income security – ILO

Nearly half of the elderly in the Philippines have no pension, according to the latest report of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

In its World Social Protection Report of 2017, the ILO said despite progress in recent years and increase in allocation, the Philippines’ so-

cial protection system “retains serious gaps,” citing as an example the majority of its elderly citizens do not have income security and pension.

The Philippine situation, the report said, “is in contrast to countries like China, Thailand, Mongolia, Brunei Darussalam and Timor-Leste which have considerably expanded their coverage through the use of universal tax funded pensions.

As a region, Asia is also not faring any better compared to other more developed regional cluster in terms of providing social protection benefits to its workers.

“Nearly half the elderly in the region still do not benefit from a pension, a proportion that is only higher in Africa,” ILO said.

And this trend could worsen as Asia’s population ages “at a historically unprecedented rate.”

“Where OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries took 50-100 years to transition from young to old societies, Asian countries are taking just 20-25 years,” ILO said.

OECD is a group of 35 developed countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Japan.

Universal pension “We think this is a good time for Philippines to follow the same path and extend protection to its elderly through the launch of a universal pension,” according to Khalid Hassan, ILO Manila Country director. The ILO report released Thursday showed that many countries, regionally and across the world, are prioritizing their social protection systems.

The “pension gap is happening at the same time that life expectancy for Filipinos is rising on average. Between 2000 and 2015, life expectancy rose by five years, the fastest increase since the 1960s,” the ILO said.

“This makes the low pension coverage a particularly troubling problem, creating additional financial burdens for family, as the ratio between elderly parents and adult children rise,” the ILO said.

The gap in pension coverage is particularly relevant because the region is ageing at a historically unprecedented rate, the ILO report said.

The international body said “around forty percent of Filipino senior citizens are still left without income security,” despite government efforts made in 2017 to increase benefit levels of senior citizens receiving contributory pension and the social pension coverage of indigent senior citizens.

Constructive measures Fortunately, the ILO said social protection is one of the major agenda in the country as reflected in the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, launched in January, 2017.

The plan, the ILO report said, has “identified adopting and institutionalizing the Social Protection Floor as one of the strategies to achieve universal social protection under the Strategic framework to reduce vulnerability of individuals and families.”

Specific strategies include establishing an unemployment insurance system, enhancing social protection for the informal sector, improving the social pension system, expanding health insurance packages, and strengthening mechanisms to ensure enrolment in the social security system, among others.

But it noted the Philippines needs to address implementation issues on convergence, planning, mainstreaming at the local level and better data collection.

In the global scale, the ILO said only 29 percent of the world population enjoy comprehensive social protection and more than 1 out of 2 people have no protection at all.

Despite being considered the engine of the world economy, the ILO said Asia clearly lags behind when it comes to the protection of its population where nearly half the elderly in the region still do not benefit from a pension, a proportion that is only higher in Africa.