PHILIPPINE DEMOGRAPHY

by Mary Louise Zozobrado

The Philippine population from 1960-2010 with the average of 56.98 million. The total population of the Philippines from 1960 was 27.1 million and the last report about the Philippine population was in 2010 which had a record of 94.6 million people. Which means that there was a 250% change during the last 50 years.

The Philippines has a 1.37 percent of the world’s total population, which means that one person in every 73 people on the planet is a resident of the Philippines.

The Population Census provides the most reliable picture of a country’s population because the data is collected at a specified time from the entire population.

In 2010, the country’s population increased by 15.83 million. So the total population of the Philippines as of May 1, 2010 is 92,337,852 based on the Census of Population and Housing in 2010. The increasing population appears compensated by an average inflation rate which rose by 0.6 percentage point to 3.8 percent in 2010 from 3.2 percent in 2009 as fuel, light and water and services index recorded higher annual average rates.

One of the impacts of population increase is on employment rate. Among these occupation groups, laborers and unskilled workers comprised the largest proportion of the total employed population which has a 32.4 percentage and followed by the farmers, forestry workers and fishermen with 16.2 percent. Employed persons are classified as either full-time workers or part-time workers. Full-time workers are those who work for 40 hours or more while part-time workers work for less than 40 hours.

In October 2010, 63.8 percent of the total employed persons worked full time while 35.0 worked part time. You are considered as underemployed when you have a job that doesn’t use your skills so on the 10^th of October there was an estimation of 7.1 million of underemployed people. 33.37% percent of the unemployed were high school graduates, 22.9% were college undergraduates and 19.4% were college graduates.

According to the results of the 2008 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), 58 million of the estimated 67 million Filipinos from ages 10-64 years old are functionally literate. A functionally literate person is someone who can read, write, compute and comprehend.

Family planning is another step to address population increase in the country. The unmet need for family planning among married women in the Philippines remains high at 19.3 percent, 10.5 percent for birth spacing and 8.8 percent for limiting births. An unmet need for family planning refers to proportion of currently married women who are not using any method of family planning but don’t want any more children or prefer to space births. Total unmet need for family is substantially greater among women considered poor compared to rich women. Unmet need also decreases with increasing education, it is highest for currently married women who are uneducated and lowest for those with college or higher education. Among women who attained a certain level of education, unmet need for spacing births is higher than for limiting births.

7 in 10 or 73 percent of married women could be using a family planning method if all family planning need were satisfied according to the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey results. The survey reveals that 51% of married women are using a family planning method or have a met need for family planning. Those with an unmet need for family planning comprise of 22%, 13% for limiting births and 9% for spacing births.

Unplanned pregnancies inevitably result to dramatic rise of population. 36 percent births in the country are either unwanted or mistimed. This is more likely to occur among older women than younger women. A surveyed data reveals that 53% of births to women aged 40-44 in 5 years preceding the survey were unplanned while majority with 84% of births were unwanted. Among ages 15-19, 31% of births were unplanned while 21% were unwanted.

Mortality Rate is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Due to the advancement of medicine, mortality rate is declining. For every 1,000 live births, 34 die before reaching the age of 5 years old according to 2008 NDHS. The infant mortality rate in the country also declined, from 35 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the period of 1993-1997 to 25 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2003-2007.

There are 3 noted causes of death in the Philippines. First, Heart Disease. Second, Cerebrovascular Diseases. Third, Malignant Neoplasm or cancer. In 2005, 18.1% were reportedly caused by heart diseases and 10.6% were caused by cerebrovascular diseases. There were 41,697 (9.8%) records that stated that cancer as the reason for death. Out of 41,697 deaths caused by cancer in 2005, 21,993 (52.7%) were males and 19,704 (47.3%) were females.

In conclusion, we should give the people their right to learn or to be educated because it is very unfair for them not to have a job just because they weren’t able to reach a certain level of education. For family planning, we should always consider the natural way because it is very risky if women do it the artificial way and it might affect the child or the mother. We should always take care of ourselves to prevent dangerous diseases. We should always think about our health first before anything else.