Importance Of Economic Growth In The Philippines

The Asian Development Bank defines the inclusive growth that creates economic opportunities which are available to all, particularly the poorest. (Rauniyar and Kanbur 2009). Growth will be inclusive when empower the poorest in the society to gain access to assets and opportunities. Equitable distribution of assets and opportunities leads to reduction of poverty and inequality and increase sustainable economic growth. “Inclusive” term particularly relates to the characterisation of growth episodes which can be traced back to at least to the verge of century end, as Kakwani and Pernia in year 2000, referred it to find out the particular ingredient of pro-poor growth. While defining pro poor growth as Defining pro-poor growth as “one

Growth is considered inclusive, according to authors, if it increases the social opportunity function, which in turn, depends on two factors namely average opportunities available to the population, and how opportunities are shared among the population. This paper also provides empirical application of the proposed approach to Philippines to analyze the access to and equity of opportunities in education and health facilities. The authors conclude that government health facilities are more utilized by the people at the lower income distribution, whereas private health facilities which are superior in quality tend to be highly inequitable in favor of rich. Further primary and secondary level education opportunities are more inequitable over the time period 1998 to 2004. The authors believe that elasticity of employment with respect to growth is useful in analyzing structural changes in employment over time, where they calculate the ratio of the growth in agriculture (against other sectors) with GDP growth for Philippines and notice a falling rate, thereby implying that Philippines is in the process of industrialization and labour is being diverted from agriculture to other