Popcom reports slowest population rate hike in ’21, but no demographic dividend assured
THE Philippines may register its slowest population growth this year, but even that cannot serve as an assurance that the country will be able to start reaping the demographic dividend anytime soon.
Based on the latest estimate of the Population and Development (Popcom), only 324,000 Filipinos or an addition of 0.3 percent to the country’s population is expected this year. This means this is the slowest population growth of the Philippines in 75 years.
Commission on Popcom Executive Director and Population and Development (POPDEV) Undersecretary Juan A. Perez III told the Businessmirror that while this “natural increase in population” will help attain replacement rate necessary for reaping the demographic dividend, it may not be enough.
“Crucial to the attainment of the demographic dividend will be the total fertility rate nearer to 2 rather than 2.5. Certainly the decline in natural increase in population will be a precursor to lower fertility,” Perez said.
“It is important to sustain this beyond the current public health emergency for us to be confident that low fertility is within reach. The numbers are important and necessary, but the dividend comes from improved wages, youth and women employment as well as greater financial literacy,” he explained.
Achieving the demographic dividend entails reaching replacement rate in terms of fertility; a large number of young workers; and an economy that is able to provide decent jobs. The demographic dividend ensures high and sustainable economic growth for a country.
“I think we are looking at 2025 not as a deadline, but a year to reestablish benchmarks for the next 15 years in population development. If the fertility declines earlier, the government must accelerate complementary policies,” Perez said.
“It would be ideal to establish these emerging policies in the next Philippine Development Plan of the next administration as the inevitability of lower fertility and stable population takes shape,” he added.
Based on the latest estimates of Popcom, the country’s total population will reach 109.991 million. This is 2 million lower than earlier projections based on a 1.63-percent population growth rate (PGR).
It made the computations based on the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) vital statistics preliminary reports for the period spanning January 2020 to August 2021.
Popcom said this annual “natural increase” is the lowest since the period between 1946 and 1947, when the population grew by 254,000.
It also noted that the natural increase in population in 2020 was 914,797 with reference to PSA’S vital statistics, which placed the population at the end of 2020 at 109.667 million. The natural increase in population that year was 0.79 percent.
“The natural increase in population, or natural population change, refers to the projection based on the number of births minus deaths in a particular time period,” Popcom said in a news statement.
While this is the lowest natural increase in population since the World War 2, Perez said this will not lead to a rapid decline in population where the future labor force would no longer be able to support the elderly or the younger generations.
Perez said maintaining an increase of 324,000 a year for two years would still lead to over 600,000 Filipinos. He said, however, that ensuring the future of these young Filipinos and soon to be born Pinoys is crucial.
He said that while there are more consumers than effective workers, creating a pool of potential effective workers for the next 15 years, there was still great variation in the support ratio (SR).
SR refers to the average number of people a wage earner supports, including himself or herself. Perez earlier said there is a “significant positive correlation” between a region’s minimum wage and its SR, and that as the minimum wage rises, the SR also goes up, and vice versa.
An SR lower than 0.5, such as in the Bangsamoro Region at 0.26, has more than 2 persons being subsidized by a worker, which takes away from a family more resources for savings and investments.
A higher SR, like in the NCR at 0.62, implies there are more earning workers, which creates a more viable environment for economic growth.
“Both the pandemic and social behavior during the pandemic and post pandemic are difficult to predict, which is why we are now using natural increase rather than projections averaged over five years which are far from reality,” Perez told the Businessmirror.
“We should start putting in policies that lead to a quality, effective work force which we hope to incorporate in the next cycle of socioeconomic planning,” he added.
Perez also emphasized that the last two years of low increases in population provide opportunities of attaining a more stable population that can support socioeconomic development at the national and household levels if integrated population and development interventions are sustained.
This demographic situation, he cautioned, should be appreciated vis-à-vis the pandemic’s effect that has caused rather unusual fertility behaviors, such as delay in family formation, couples’ unions and increasing contraceptive usage, which need to be investigated further.
Nonetheless, Perez noted that the low 2020-2021 population growth enables a greater chance for the country and households to recover from the Covid-19 outbreak, given the national and local governments’ increased capabilities in providing quality services to Filipinos.
The Popcom chief also said that the agency’s projected population for 2021 does not yet cover international migration during the year, and that the civil registration data as reported by PSA is also subject to underreporting and late reporting. Popcom, he assured, will update this projection as soon as data becomes available.