Poverty, Living Wage & Income Inequality in the Developing World : Views and Visions from the Philippines

Mainstream academia’s and neoliberal economists’ failure to exhaustively explain the roots of the 2008 crisis and point a way towards how the world can fully recover from it, made radical theories of poverty and income inequality more popular and relevant as ever. Official World Bank statistics on poverty and their traditional measurements are put into question and even an IMF-funded study admits that instead of delivering growth, neoliberalism has not succeeded in bringing economic development to the broadest number of people, as massive poverty and income inequality abound in many countries, more especially in the developing world. Drawing from theories on surplus value, labor exploitation, and economic dependency, this paper will present an updated critique of the official poverty line in the Philippines and how official statistics mask the true extent of poverty in the country, thereby figuratively rendering many faces of poverty hidden if not obliterated; contrast the official view from the perspectives of progressive NGOs and social movements; analyze the link between poverty and income inequality within the country’s neocolonial set-up; and discuss the consequences of income inequality, especially with regard to globalization’s discontents in the Philippines. This book chapter will be a unique contribution as it will tackle the curious case of the Philippines – a country with relatively strong macroeconomic performance which doesn’t translate into massive poverty alleviation and bridging of huge income gaps. Furthermore, it will exhaustively compare official/government views with grassroots perspectives, thereby ensuring that the various facets of the poverty problem are covered. Finally, the proposed chapter will present a critique of official poverty and living wage definitions, as a springboard to discussing alternative measures of poverty and living wage definitions that will better expose how bad the problem is (as a first step towards finally resolving it)