Poverty, Vulnerability and Family Size: Evidence from the Philippines

Abstract

The population and poverty nexus is not new but remains an important development issue for many countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the debate on role of population growth and family size in development, in general, and poverty, in particular, is largely unresolved. Recent research has added the important dimension of vulnerability to poverty to the debate on the determinants of the welfare status of a population. Dercon (2005) has emphasized that vulnerability can even cause poverty. The issue of vulnerability has hardly been dealt with using Philippine data. This paper summarizes the empirical evidence, both from secondary sources and from the author’s own analyses, on the importance of family size in poverty and vulnerability to poverty.