Pantawid Pamilya Program

The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program is a human development program of the national government that invests in the health and education of poor households, particularly of children aged 0-14 years old. Patterned after the conditional cash transfer scheme implemented in other developing countries, the Pantawid Pamilya provides cash grants to beneficiaries provided that they comply with the set of conditions required by the program.

Pantawid Pamilya has dual objectives: • Social Assistance - to provide cash assistance to the poor to alleviate their immediate need (short term poverty alleviation); and • Social Development - to break the intergenerational poverty cycle through investments in human capital.
Pantawid Pamilya helps to fulfill the country’s commitment to meet the Millennium Development Goals, namely: 1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger 2. Achieve Universal Primary Education 3. Promote Gender Equality 4. Reduce Child Mortality 5. Improve Maternal Health

|Article Index |
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|About Pantawid Pamilya |
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|Targeting System |
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|Program Cycle |
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|Program Package |
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|Institutional Arrangements |
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|Contacts |
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|All Pages |
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|ShareThis |
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|Targeting System |
|The poorest households in the municipalities are selected through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) implemented by |
|the DSWD using the Proxy Means Test. This test determines the socio-economic category of the families by looking at certain proxy variables such as |
|ownership of assets, type of housing, education of the household head, livelihood of the family and access to water and sanitation facilities. |
|Eligible Households |
|Households who are classified as poor based on the NHTS-PR at the time of assessment |
|Households that have children 0-14 years old and/or have a pregnant woman at the time of assessment |
|Households that agree to meet conditions specified in the program. |
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|Set of Co-Responsibilities |
|To avail of the cash grants beneficiaries should comply with the following conditions: |
|Pregnant women must avail pre- and post-natal care and be attended during childbirth by a trained health professional; |
|Parents must attend Family Development Sessions (FDS); |
|0-5 year old children must receive regular preventive health check-ups and vaccines; |
|3-5 year old children must attend day care or pre-school classes at least 85% of the time. |
|6-14 year old children must enroll in elementary or high school and must attend at least 85% of the time. |
|6-14 years old children must receive deworming pills twice a year. |
|Program Coverage |
|Pantawid Pamilya operates in 79 provinces covering 1484 municipalities and 143 key cities in all 17 regions nationwide. |
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|The program has 3,927,917 registered households as of 26 June 2013. |
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Program Cycle

The implementation of Pantawid Pamilya Program follows the 8-step cycle starting from the 1) selection of target areas, 2) supply side assessment, 3) selection of household beneficiaries, 4) registration and validation of beneficiaries, 5) Family Registry preparation, 6) initial payment, 7) verification of compliance and 8) 2nd and succeeding release of cash grants.

Program Package
Pantawid Pamilya provides cash grants to the beneficiaries to wit: • P6,000 a year or P500 per month per household for health and nutrition expenses; and • P3000 for one school year or 10 months or P300/month per child for educational expenses. A maximum of three children per household is allowed.
A household with three qualified children receives a subsidy of P1,400/month during the school year or P15,000 annually as long as they comply with the conditionalities. The cash grants shall be received by the most responsible person in the household, usually the mother, through a Land Bank cash card. In cases where payment through cash card is not feasible, the beneficiaries shall be provided their cash grants through an alternative payment scheme such as over-the-counter transactions from the nearest Landbank branch or offsite payments through Landbank. Cash grants are also released through other rural banks, Globe Remit, Philpost, First Consolidated Bank and other Cooperative Financial Institutions (CFI) especially in far-flung areas.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) would like to warn the public on text scams currently circulating. The text message contains the following: “Congratulations, from President Noy-Noy Aquino Foundation 4Ps Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, your sim # won P950,000 as second prize winner in the Handog Pangkabuhayan raffle promo, DTI P#9513 s’12. Please text your complete name, age, address, work.”

The DSWD would like to emphasize that the Department does not hold any raffle promos or draws. Pantawid Pamilya does not also give away prizes. Pantawid Pamilya is a program of the national government that provides cash grants to poor households in exchange of complying with the conditionalities of the program. It is a human development program that invests in the health and education of poor households primarily of children aged 0-14.

The DSWD urges all those who will receive this text message to ignore it.

At a recent forum on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (or 4Ps) held at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, experts from different government agencies and academic institutions discussed the rationale and the feasibility of extending and expanding the program.

Under the management of Department of Social and Welfare Development (DSWD), the 4Ps is widely known to be the lynchpin of the government’s anti-poverty efforts. One of its key interventions is the provision of small cash transfers to mothers, as long as they commit to investing in their children, such as by ensuring their children go to school, as well as get deworming, vaccination and regular health check-ups to name a few other aspects of the program. 4Ps operates in 79 provinces covering 1484 municipalities and 143 key cities in all 17 regions nationwide.

As of June 2013, the program covered almost 4 million households. The planned extension of the 4Ps program will include an additional 2 million children to the current 8.5 million in the program. A special emphasis will be placed on providing additional support to children from poor families who would like to go to high school.

Yet, even as the budget for 4Ps is set to increase, some people seem impatient about its pay-off, which most assume will be immediate—such as reducing the number of poor and hungry people in the country. Several opposition politicians have even resorted to calling the government program a “dole-out”. And some question the size of the allocations dedicated to the 4Ps. Their typical argument is that there are better alternative uses for these funds.

At that forum, I argued otherwise—noting that the 4Ps program is and continues to be a good investment. Here’s why.

Ending poverty

First, the 4Ps is NOT the only program in the anti-poverty strategy of the government, yet it’s quite possibly the most important component. The reason is that this program attacks one of the root causes of poverty—weak education, health and other human development characteristics that disadvantage a poor person.

No amount of job creation will employ and lift out of poverty millions of under-skilled and unhealthy citizens. No business would get into such an enterprise, and no government can sustain economic growth and job creation on such a weak foundation. Therefore, human capital build-up is, first and foremost, the key ingredient in the strategy.

What is often poorly understood about the 4Ps program is that it’s less focused on adults, and more focused on the next generation. The economic pay-off from these investments, therefore, will take some years to fully manifest—in the form of more educated and healthy citizens and more productive workers.

If we are serious about poverty reduction (and dare I say, poverty eradication), investing in children is where we should really begin. Otherwise, a never ending stream of people with weak education and health will add to the ranks of the poor.

Of course, human capital is not enough. Access to the other factors of production and growth will also need to dramatically improve for the vast majority of the population—such as through microfinance and lending to SMEs (improving access to capital); and true agrarian reform (access to land).

Preparing for the country’s youth bulge

According to the United Nations, our country is expected to reach its peak number of young people by around 2040-2050, roughly 25-30 years from today (see Figure 1). This means the brunt of our future labor force is comprised of infants already being born today—and their future capabilities depend heavily on the policy choices we make.

4Ps can help ensure that the majority of our young people do not fall through the cracks. For every 1.8 to 2 million children born every year in the Philippines, at least about one-third (or up to six hundred thousand) are born to poor families according to some estimates. Because of 4Ps, children will grow up to be educated, healthy, and productive members of Philippine society, contributing to the country’s economic competitiveness in the longer term. Therefore, the 4Ps is not merely a matter of charity for poor children as far as the country is concerned—our long run economic growth depends in large part on how successfully we equip our future citizens and workers to compete.

Nevertheless, the 4Ps prepares future workers; but it does not in itself create jobs. It is imperative that more jobs are created and more entrepreneurship encouraged in order to spur economic development that is inclusive for the vast majority of the youth.

Figure 1. Philippine Youth (Aged 15-24), 1950-2100 (In Millions)
[pic]
Source: UN Population Division (World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision).
Fueling economic and political transformation

Improved human capital will definitely be useful for improving wages and productivity—but it could also help sustain “matuwid na daan”. This is possible if a strong social protection system underpinned by 4Ps truly “emancipates” over 4 million poor families from patronage politics.

Patronage has become a way of life for many of our citizens, because the conditions of poverty force our people to seek help. And before 4Ps, poor families typically only had the local political patron as their main option. Table 1 provides a tongue-in-cheek outline of the major differences between professionally managed and evidence-based social protection vs. patronage politics. Table 1. 4Ps vs. Patronage Politics
[pic]
As I noted in another Rappler article on reforming pork barrel politics, politicians are not the only ones addicted to pork—poor families actively seek the support of politicians, and they will continue to do so unless a proper social protection system is able to help poor and low income families mitigate risks and empower them in a systematic, fair, and evidence-based manner.

The 4Ps contains key accountabilities in helping the poor to break free from the poverty trap—it is targeted at the poorest households (and not merely political allies); the cash support is less than what is necessary to be technically non-poor but enough to matter for child investments (so it is specifically designed to mitigate the risk of dependency); and beneficiaries (typically the cash is given to mothers) are required to deliver on conditions that are linked to investing in children (and not merely conditioned on voting for the patron).

On top of all this, the 4Ps is among only a small number of government programs that are actually evaluated for their impact. In fact, the impact evaluation evidence suggests that the design of the 4Ps seems to successfully mitigate any possible dependency effects—poor families actually further increase child investments, over and above the cash transfer itself.

These are all good reasons to continue to expand and improve the program. Killing this program will bring us back to the previous status quo: no evaluation; poorly targeted; riddled with leakages (so that non poor people also benefit, and far less reaches the poor); and likely to be dominated by patronage politics.

At a recent forum on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (or 4Ps) held at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, experts from different government agencies and academic institutions discussed the rationale and the feasibility of extending and expanding the program.

Under the management of Department of Social and Welfare Development (DSWD), the 4Ps is widely known to be the lynchpin of the government’s anti-poverty efforts. One of its key interventions is the provision of small cash transfers to mothers, as long as they commit to investing in their children, such as by ensuring their children go to school, as well as get deworming, vaccination and regular health check-ups to name a few other aspects of the program. 4Ps operates in 79 provinces covering 1484 municipalities and 143 key cities in all 17 regions nationwide.

As of June 2013, the program covered almost 4 million households. The planned extension of the 4Ps program will include an additional 2 million children to the current 8.5 million in the program. A special emphasis will be placed on providing additional support to children from poor families who would like to go to high school.

Yet, even as the budget for 4Ps is set to increase, some people seem impatient about its pay-off, which most assume will be immediate—such as reducing the number of poor and hungry people in the country. Several opposition politicians have even resorted to calling the government program a “dole-out”. And some question the size of the allocations dedicated to the 4Ps. Their typical argument is that there are better alternative uses for these funds.

At that forum, I argued otherwise—noting that the 4Ps program is and continues to be a good investment. Here’s why.

Ending poverty

First, the 4Ps is NOT the only program in the anti-poverty strategy of the government, yet it’s quite possibly the most important component. The reason is that this program attacks one of the root causes of poverty—weak education, health and other human development characteristics that disadvantage a poor person.

No amount of job creation will employ and lift out of poverty millions of under-skilled and unhealthy citizens. No business would get into such an enterprise, and no government can sustain economic growth and job creation on such a weak foundation. Therefore, human capital build-up is, first and foremost, the key ingredient in the strategy.

What is often poorly understood about the 4Ps program is that it’s less focused on adults, and more focused on the next generation. The economic pay-off from these investments, therefore, will take some years to fully manifest—in the form of more educated and healthy citizens and more productive workers.

If we are serious about poverty reduction (and dare I say, poverty eradication), investing in children is where we should really begin. Otherwise, a never ending stream of people with weak education and health will add to the ranks of the poor.

Of course, human capital is not enough. Access to the other factors of production and growth will also need to dramatically improve for the vast majority of the population—such as through microfinance and lending to SMEs (improving access to capital); and true agrarian reform (access to land).

Preparing for the country’s youth bulge

According to the United Nations, our country is expected to reach its peak number of young people by around 2040-2050, roughly 25-30 years from today (see Figure 1). This means the brunt of our future labor force is comprised of infants already being born today—and their future capabilities depend heavily on the policy choices we make.

4Ps can help ensure that the majority of our young people do not fall through the cracks. For every 1.8 to 2 million children born every year in the Philippines, at least about one-third (or up to six hundred thousand) are born to poor families according to some estimates. Because of 4Ps, children will grow up to be educated, healthy, and productive members of Philippine society, contributing to the country’s economic competitiveness in the longer term. Therefore, the 4Ps is not merely a matter of charity for poor children as far as the country is concerned—our long run economic growth depends in large part on how successfully we equip our future citizens and workers to compete.

Nevertheless, the 4Ps prepares future workers; but it does not in itself create jobs. It is imperative that more jobs are created and more entrepreneurship encouraged in order to spur economic development that is inclusive for the vast majority of the youth.

Figure 1. Philippine Youth (Aged 15-24), 1950-2100 (In Millions)
[pic]
Source: UN Population Division (World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision).
Fueling economic and political transformation

Improved human capital will definitely be useful for improving wages and productivity—but it could also help sustain “matuwid na daan”. This is possible if a strong social protection system underpinned by 4Ps truly “emancipates” over 4 million poor families from patronage politics.

Patronage has become a way of life for many of our citizens, because the conditions of poverty force our people to seek help. And before 4Ps, poor families typically only had the local political patron as their main option. Table 1 provides a tongue-in-cheek outline of the major differences between professionally managed and evidence-based social protection vs. patronage politics. Table 1. 4Ps vs. Patronage Politics
[pic]
As I noted in another Rappler article on reforming pork barrel politics, politicians are not the only ones addicted to pork—poor families actively seek the support of politicians, and they will continue to do so unless a proper social protection system is able to help poor and low income families mitigate risks and empower them in a systematic, fair, and evidence-based manner.

The 4Ps contains key accountabilities in helping the poor to break free from the poverty trap—it is targeted at the poorest households (and not merely political allies); the cash support is less than what is necessary to be technically non-poor but enough to matter for child investments (so it is specifically designed to mitigate the risk of dependency); and beneficiaries (typically the cash is given to mothers) are required to deliver on conditions that are linked to investing in children (and not merely conditioned on voting for the patron).

On top of all this, the 4Ps is among only a small number of government programs that are actually evaluated for their impact. In fact, the impact evaluation evidence suggests that the design of the 4Ps seems to successfully mitigate any possible dependency effects—poor families actually further increase child investments, over and above the cash transfer itself.

These are all good reasons to continue to expand and improve the program. Killing this program will bring us back to the previous status quo: no evaluation; poorly targeted; riddled with leakages (so that non poor people also benefit, and far less reaches the poor); and likely to be dominated by patronage politics.