EDITORIAL - Providing for a growing population

From 2020 when the pandemic lockdowns were imposed until the end of this year, the Philippine population is expected to grow by an estimated six million. This will bring the total by yearend to 115 million from the 109 million recorded in the 2020 census, the Commission on Population and Development or CPD announced at the start of this week.

Changing lifestyles and attitudes toward family size and reproductive health are seen to have contributed to a slowdown in the country’s population growth. The CPD sees the annual growth rate now stable at 1.6 percent, with women giving birth to an average of two children. With the slower population growth rate, the working age group of 15 to 64 has become dominant, while the number of young dependents has gone down, the CPD said.

Still, the Philippines remains the 13th most populous country in the world, and the seventh in the Asia-Pacific, according to the CPD. Population growth always poses challenges to limited resources, especially if economic growth fails to keep up, which has long been the case in this country. This can be gleaned from various indicators including the poverty rate, which has hardly gone down, and which in fact “significantly” increased between 2018 and 2021, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The PSA also reported that as of 2021, fisherfolk, farmers, children and people living in rural areas remained the poorest sectors. The government struggles to provide adequate basic services to the people, from education to health care, shelter and modern sanitation. Malnutrition and undernutrition continue to stunt the physical and mental development of people in low-income communities.

Apart from limited resources to provide the basic needs of much of the population, the country also cannot generate enough decent jobs. This is evident in the continuing exodus of Filipinos for jobs overseas, even in conflict zones and in countries notorious for maltreatment of migrant workers. The people constitute a nation’s most precious resource. With the population growth rate stabilizing, the government should be able to do a better job of providing the basic needs of the people.