Addressing child poverty

According to a paper issued this month on The Situation of Filipino Children by the Senate Economic Planning Office, children aged zero to 17 often grapple with a multitude of daunting challenges.

"If not adequately addressed, [these challenges] could impede their ability to reach their full potential throughout their lives, and contribute effectively to the nation's human capital development and economic growth," the paper stressed.

The findings are indeed troubling, with the paper declaring that Filipino children "are more likely to live in poverty than the general population, as evidenced by higher poverty incidences since 2006." Data show that in 2021, child poverty—defined as the proportion of children who belong to families whose income is insufficient to meet their basic food and non-food needs to the total number of children—rose by 2.5 percentage points from 2018, reaching 10.46 million children. This could be attributed to the impacts of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.