Commission on Population (PopCom) executive director Tomas Osias said there has been a "feminization" of international migration in the Philippines as more women leave the country in search of employment.
He said based on the records of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Filipino females have already outnumbered males in going abroad with a ratio of 66:100.
"That means abstinence from sexual practices. Female temporary contract workers will practice longer birth spacing and will not bear additional burden while abroad," he noted in an interview.
Osias claimed that contract workers who come home for vacation also become conscious of their fertility for fear of getting pregnant, hampering their work.
"When they come home and get pregnant unplanned, there is a possibility that they won’t be able to go back to their work so they become very careful," he added.
The children of Filipinos who reside permanently abroad, on the other hand, become inhabitants of the host countries so they no longer contribute to the Philippine population.
"International migration might help mitigate population explosion. It might have somewhat managed population growth in the Philippines," he maintained.
But Osias said that more studies are needed to be done to "empirically prove these observations."
"It is difficult to determine if migrant households, which have larger average household sizes than non-migrant households, tend to produce more children in spite of overseas migration," he added.
PopCom estimates that the country’s population will rise to 88.1 million this year because of the 1.7 million babies born annually. – Sheila Crisostomo