Philippines rewards poor as Asia income gap grows

Through a program in the Philippines called Pantawid Pamilya (Family Subsistence), 3 million poor households like Capco's get small grants from the government if they keep their children in school and take them regularly to health centers.

“It's really a big help because now we don't have a problem about whether we can have food to eat or if the kids have money to go to school,” Capco, 43, said with her 2-year-old daughter Rihanna in her lap.

A high school graduate with gleaming eyes and a ready smile, Capco has been in the ramshackle community for 18 years. None of her neighbors has a steady job.

With a quarter of its people below the poverty line as the population crests 100 million, the Philippines points to the need for developing Asia to reverse worsening inequality and broaden the benefits of the region's tremendous economic growth.

Conditional Cash Transfer schemes like Pantawid Pamilya — so named for the conditions imposed to qualify for benefits — were pioneered in Brazil and Mexico and have proven very effective in giving immediate help to the poor and breaking vicious cycles of poverty by improving health, education and opportunities.

Narrowing the wealth gap has become as pressing as poverty alleviation, making it a key theme of this week's annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila with government officials, bankers and civil society groups from 67 countries. Inequality is rising in 11 countries making up 82 percent of Asia's population, the ADB says. That list includes China, India and Indonesia — three huge economies driving much of the growth.

“Relative to other regions, the recent period of growth in Asia has been both less inclusive and less pro-poor,” the International Monetary Fund said in a report.

Hole in the Hull

Even wealthy countries are feeling the pain.

In Japan, the world's third-largest economy, a rapidly ageing society is putting pressure on a pension system designed when it was assumed contributions would rise in perpetuity.

In South Korea, the 15th largest economy, relative poverty has worsened, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a recent survey of the country.

In 1990, about 8 percent of South Koreans lived on less than half of the median income. These days, it is about 15 percent.

For Rajat Nag, the ADB's managing director general, growing inequality “threatens to undermine the region's stability.”

Governments in Asia have the resources to promote inclusive growth, he said in mid-April, and they should adopt more targeted social spending. That means rolling back poorly focused schemes like the fuel subsidies in Indonesia that the government finds hugely costly but politically difficult to kill.

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