DEVC Module 2

• Lack of education may lead to serious consequences ranging from lack of job opportunities to hunger and malnutrition
• Farmers complained about lack of infrastructure, very low farm-gate prices, high prices of farm inputs, lack of opportunities for training or continuing education, and manipulation of product prices by cartels
• Societal problems that beset developing nations include poverty, unemployment, high population growth, inequality, environmental degradation and the loss of arable land, malnutrition, and ethnic conflict
• Poverty is more prevalent in the Global South, which refers to low-income nations and emerging economies mostly located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America
• In 2017, a little less than 700 million people lived on less than USD 2.15 a day (i.e., "extreme poverty")
• The COVID-19 pandemic reversed the declining trend of extreme poverty rate, from 8.4% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2020
• By the end of 2022, 667-685 million people were still living in poverty
• The poverty incidence in the Philippines in 2018 was 16.7% of its total population, rising to 18.1% in 2021
• In September-October 2023, 48% of Filipino families considered themselves "poor", 27% thought they were on the border between poor and not poor, and 25% said they were not poor
• The unemployment rate in the Philippines was 17.7% in April 2020 during the height of nationwide lockdowns
• The labor force participation rate (LFPR) in the Philippines decreased in 2020 to its lowest (55.6%) in the country's labor market history due to the pandemic
• The country's unemployment rate was estimated at 4.2% and its LFPR at 63.9% in October 2023
• Inequality is more noticeable in the economic, cultural, and political aspects of people's lives
• In 2022, the world's 2,668 billionaires had a combined fortune of USD 12.7 trillion
• The 10 richest individuals owned more wealth than the bottom 40 percent (around 3.1 billion people) of the global population
• The richest 20 had fortunes worth more than the combined GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa
• The COVID-19 pandemic produced 573 new billionaires, 40 of whom were from the pharmaceutical industry
• The Gini coefficient of Filipino families' income in 2018 was 0.4267, implying a highly uneven income distribution
• In 2021, the country's Gini coefficient improved slightly to 0.4119
• The World Bank estimates show that the Gini index of the Philippines is one of the highest in Southeast Asia
• In 2015, 58.4% of Filipinos belonged to the low-income class, 40.2% were middle-income, and only 1.4% were high-income
• As of 2018, 47.7% of Filipino households were low-income, 50.1% were middle-income, and only 2.1% were high-income
• Among the middle-income households, almost two-thirds (63.6%) are in the lower middle group
• The 40 richest families on the Forbes wealth list accounted for 76% of the country's GDP growth in 2011
• Lower-income households spent much their income on food, while high-income households prioritized other non-food items
• Bilateral trade openness is associated with a reduction of bilateral cultural distance between nations
• The ruling class dominates a society through manipulating its culture, which allows them to strengthen their hold on the economy and other aspects of that society
• The economic elite in the Philippines are also the cultural trendsetters in the country, in general
• Indigenous peoples belonging to ethnolinguistic minorities in the Philippines have long experienced various forms of economic exploitation and cultural discrimination
• The Aytas and Mangyans of Luzon, the Atis of the Visayas, and the Lumads of Mindanao have been impoverished in their own land for many decades
• The Atis of Boracay, who were the first inhabitants of the island, have lived a marginal life in the popular tourist destination dominated by big businessmen today
• Indigenous Filipinos are still looked down on by some kababayan from more dominant ethnolinguistic groups
• The Mangyans of Mindoro have endured not just decades but millennia of marginalization
• The colonial policies of Spain and the United States, and even the use of the colonial masters' native tongue as official language of governance and communication, worked to the Mangyans' disadvantage, which was exploited by some unscrupulous non-Mangyan migrants or "lowlanders" who grabbed their lands and employed them as workers with meager salaries
• Necessity is the mother of invention.
• Development communication evolved as a professional and scientific discipline in the 1960s to address pervasive problems in countries with post-colonial backgrounds.
• The term "Third World" is no longer in vogue after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe but the problems and conditions represented by it have not disappeared nor diminished.
• Three (3) characteristics of Third World Problems:

  1. come in clusters;
  2. occuring and recurring with alarming consistency;
  3. tenacity like a collective nightmare that refuses to pass
• Development communication assumes that the problems may be turned to root causes which may be remedied by information and communication.
• Poverty is a problem that brings with it a host of other virulent problems, such as societal instability, vices, and diseases.