Richer Philippine Regions Have More Overseas Pinoys

THE BENEFITS of Filipinos’ overseas migration reach more to Philippine regions having lesser levels of poverty incidence.

The National Capital Region, Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon, and the Ilocos regions have the most number of overseas workers, immigrants, and households that are receiving cash, gifts and other forms of support from abroad.

A Migration and Development Statistical Almanac cited government-sourced administrative and survey data showed that NCR, Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon had deployed the most number of total land-and sea-based overseas contract workers during the years 2004 to 2007.

The data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed that the three regions also had the most number of female overseas workers deployed. In 2007 alone, NCR-based overseas workers reached 107,454 including 56,370 female workers, while Southern Luzon had 71,842 workers and Central Luzon had 58,393 overseas workers.

The number of overseas workers per year cannot be added up to avoid returning overseas workers being counted once again. At the same time, POEA’s data miss out overseas workers who registered to be residing in a Metro Manila residence but are born in a rural birthplace of origin.

Meanwhile, from 1988 to 2007, nearly half of the total overseas-based permanent residents and emigrants who registered with the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) came from the National Capital Region (448,066), Central Luzon (199,274), and Southern Tagalog (173,074).

These three regions are also the top origin source regions of Filipinos and Filipinas who have married foreign spouses and who have registered with CFO. NCR has 115,969 spouses, Central Luzon has 40,212, and Southern Tagalog has 32,313.

The triennial Family Income and Expenditures survey of the National Statistics Office, covering the years 1997 to 2006, show that NCR, Southern Tagalog, and Central Luzon had the most number of households receiving cash, gifts, and other forms of assistance from abroad.

From the 1,610,494 migrant households that the FIES estimated in 2006, for example, some 298,965 households came from Southern Tagalog, 259,643 came from Central Luzon, and 249,906 came from NCR.

The 1997 FIES found some 881,261 migrant households, while in the 2000, FIES counted some 1,106,504 migrant households. The number of migrant households increased to 1,310,162 in the 2003 FIES.

The data in all these regional levels on overseas workers, permanent residents, and households receiving cash and other forms of assistance from abroad, poorer regions such as CARAGA, Eastern Visayas (region 8), the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, and Socsargen (region 12) have lesser numbers of overseas Filipinos and their families left behind.

Many studies by Filipino economists and sociologists have found that people from regions with higher poverty incidence do not have the means to afford the cost of going abroad. On a regional purview also, these poorer regions also received less amounts of remittances. /MP