Social advantage is the bigger factor
When the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector grew to become a major contributor to GDP over a decade ago, it was hailed as having the potential to keep bright, young people from leaving the country and offer them a key to greater social mobility.
At 17 percent annual growth and 1.3 million jobs created in 2017, the BPO industry is now predicted to surpass overseas remittances this year and become the number one source of revenue for the country.
In this context, the recent statement by Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno about hard work may be true, even for workers in the informal sector enjoying the spillover benefits of the BPO industry. Diokno, commenting about returning workers from Kuwait, was quoted as saying that if one would just work hard enough in this country, he or she would not go hungry.
With increased revenues backed by a new tax law and a robust service export industry and overseas remittances, government is banking on its "Build, Build, Build" program to hire more workers and protect returning overseas workers from sliding to poverty.
This, however, is not good enough. In a 2016 study by Jan Rutkowski for the World Bank, he concluded that poverty in the Philippines is primarily due to the low earning capacity of the poor and to their limited access to regular and productive jobs. "Behind these are the two interrelated root causes of in-work poverty --low education of the poor, and the scarcity of productive job opportunities."
"The poor hold jobs that are informal, temporary or casual, and low-paid. They do not benefit from wage growth because their bargaining power is weak," the study revealed.
The reality is that inclusive growth -one that supports a broad cross-section of society- requires more than just a boom in one sector that allows a certain segment in society to drive up property and auto sales. The bigger challenge lies in how to translate that secular boom into long-term stability for the country's economy where relative social mobility should be the cornerstone.
The essence of social mobility is that if you work hard enough to acquire the needed skills and knowledge and apply these diligently into the job market, you will be able to improve your current social status.
One crude way, for example, to gauge the degree of social mobility in a society is to observe the current social status of your poor, middle class and rich high school or college peers several years after your batch has graduated.
Omitting exceptional cases of rags-to-riches stories, consider how most of your poor and middle class peers remain relatively in more or less the same social situation they found their families in during those years their parents struggled to keep them in school.
While others may have earned higher domestic or foreign incomes, these are continually shared to family and relatives who have remained marginalized because of lack of job and business opportunities relative to the level and quality of their education or training.
As a result, these relatively high earners continually fail to accumulate enough savings and capital to be available either personally or to a bigger market as a leverage to raise the level of productivity and innovation in our society.
Meanwhile, those who are well off, regardless of their grades in school and as long as they have earned their credentials, just needed to tap into their parents' wide social connections to give them an advantage in the tough job market and business environment. Creditors like banks also favor extending capital to those already backed up by strong collateral security either in terms of real, personal or social assets.
In our society, it is not really about how hard you work. The far more superior factor is whom you know.
Secretary Diokno's "work hard, you won't go hungry" statement, therefore, needs to be called out with the realization that the Filipino people's fears and aspirations cannot be reduced to merely their ability to put food on the table.
The bigger point of the Filipino people's sacrifices is to attain social mobility and improve their and the future generations' life-chances.
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