Phil. Migration and Development Statistical Almanac

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Packaging the Almanac

Thursday, 18 December 2008

How this Statistical Almanac was developed

The world now lives in an era of what experts call “international migration and development.” Now that the movement of people is a visible development issue worldwide, all the more that the Philippines must have available statistics on overseas Filipinos that are then analyzed with identified socio-economic development indicators.

The Institute for Migration and Development Issues started compiling datasets on overseas Filipinos when it was technical editor of a government publication called the Fourth State of the Philippine Population Report (SPPR4), the report, still to be released by the Commission on Population (PopCom)), was a first attempt to look at Filipinos’ international migration from the standpoint of demography—with migration both internal and international, among the three processes in demography.

In the course of IMDI’s work for that report, the Institute developed a “Migration and Development Databank”. This old databank was then placed in IMDI’s website, the Philippine Diaspora Philanthropy Portal (when its domain name was then www.filipinodiasporagiving.org, and is now www.ofwphilanthropy.org). The objective of that databank is to present international migration statistics from a development standpoint, and then relate that databank to the possible resources that can be lured from overseas Filipinos.

This current Migration and Development Statistical Almanac is a sequel to that old Migration and Development Databank. Partner organizations have then expressed interest in developing this Statistical Almanac, a first of its kind in the country.

Framework

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The framework to present this Migration and Development Statistical Almanac comes from the population and development (Pop-Dev) field. A framework on the interaction between population and development, first developed by renowned health economist Dr. Alejandro Herrin in 1993, is used here to organize the presentation of the Almanac’s datasets. This Pop-Dev interaction (see Figure 1) not only shows the relationship of population and development factors, but also distinguishes between processes and outcomes (Alejandro Herrin in National Economic Development Authority, 1993).

Fertility, mortality, and migration (both internal and international) are the three population processes. These processes lead to outcomes such as population size, the distribution of the population by age and sex, and the distribution of the population in the various regions or areas. These outcomes affect various development processes in many ways. Among these processes include consumption of good and services, savings and investment behavior, public expenditure patterns, utilization of human, physical and natural resources, among others (NEDA, 1993).

This Pop-Dev relationship can be more complex as there are other processes coming out (e.g. utilization of resources such as land [leading to determine the productivity of land and the environment], utilization of labor [to determine levels of employment, unemployment and underemployment], and utilization of capital and technology). All these inter-related processes, in turn, lead to development outcomes that will give us an indication of the extent to which we are achieving our development objectives. These outcomes are expressed in terms of measures such as income distribution, levels of employment, education, health and nutritional status, among others. In turn, these socio-economic outcomes also affect the very processes of fertility, mortality, and migration (NEDA, 1993).

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Major units of analysis

Given the available information from the Philippine government, as well as limitations surrounding the entire national statistical system, this Philippine Migration and Development Statistical Almanac used the following variables as the major units of analysis:

Types of overseas migration: Temporary, permanent, and undocumented (to be defined in succeeding sections);
People involved: Overseas Filipinos and their households in the Philippines;
Geographic areas: Countries of destination and Philippine regional groupings and provinces (existing datasets render it largely impossible to produce municipal or city-level datasets on overseas Filipinos and on households with overseas migrant members);
Gender disaggregation: Male and female;
Remittances: Philippine peso and United States dollar values; and
Years of coverage: Multiple years, especially for international migration statistics, so that trends and patterns can be seen.

Parts of this Migration and Development Statistical Almanac

The entire exercise the Institute for Migration and Development Issues and collaborating partners did was harmonizing international migration statistics. For purposes of this publication, harmonizing international migration statistics refers to the putting together of scattered data on overseas Filipinos from various government sources, as well as some academic or privately-produced data (using data generated by government agencies).

After the statistics on overseas Filipinos have been harmonized, the Statistical Almanac then cross-tabulated these data with existing socio-economic development and demographic data. This juxtaposition of international migration data and development data represents the links surrounding international migration and development.

This Statistical Almanac consists of three major parts.

Part 1 contains the Harmonized Statistics on Overseas Filipinos. The data for these statistics come from the various government agencies that regularly produce administrative and survey data, and that are all part of the country’s international migration bureaucracy (data on overseas Filipinos are presented in a separate section).

Part 1 contains six major sub-parts: 1) Temporary migrants; 2) Permanent migrants; 3) Undocumented or Irregular migrants; 4) Migrant households; 5) Remittances; and 6) Overseas migration and development outcomes.

The available datasets on temporary migrants, permanent migrants, undocumented or irregular migrants, and migrant households are then presented according to an outline that is contained in the operational framework of this Almanac. Within each sub-part, data on temporary/permanent/undocumented migrants and migrant households are presented under “population outcomes,” “development processes,” and “development outcomes.”

Variables under “population outcomes” include: a) population size; b) age; c) sex structure or gender; d) civil status; e) spatial distribution in the Philippines; and f) spatial distribution overseas. Variables under “development processes” usually cover employment characteristics, as well as some consumption of goods and services. Lastly, variables under “development outcomes” cover educational attainment, employment dynamics, and income.

While migrant households located in the Philippines are not the ones migrating overseas, voluminous datasets prompted about them the separate presentation of migrant households data according to this Almanac’s operational framework.

Meanwhile, datasets on remittances were sub-divided into three parts: a) remittance volumes; b) remitters; and c) remittance recipients.

And given the datasets contained in the first five sub-parts under Part 1, the Institute also packaged some tables under the theme “overseas migration and development outcomes.” These datasets provide a preliminary look at some of the positive and negative consequences of Filipinos’ international migration. The datasets for this sub-part are sub-divided into: a) overseas migration and demography; b) overseas migration and domestic employment; and c) overseas migration, poverty, and income. Users of this Almanac are also encouraged to develop their own cross-tabulations on the socio-economic consequences of Filipinos’ international migration.

Part 2 covers the Countries of Destination of Filipinos. The first two sub-parts of the datasets per destination country cover socio-economic and demographic data, as well as identified development indicators per country. The third sub-part consists of international migration and remittances datasets in each of these countries. Datasets from these three sub-parts come from existing publications of the World Bank: the 2007 Little Data Book and the 2008 Migration and Remittances Factbook.

Data on Filipinos in each and every country are presented as well. The Filipino data included here are: a) Filipinos in this destination country, covering temporary migrants, permanent migrants, and undocumented or irregular migrants; and b) remittances the Philippines received from this destination country. The data on the number of Filipinos and remittances from Filipinos in a certain destination country came from the harmonized statistics on overseas Filipinos.

There are 239 countries identified to be having Filipinos. Some countries may have data on Filipinos, but no data on remittances. The situation can also be the reverse: there are no publicly-available data on the number of Filipinos in a certain country, but there are remittances data. The 239 countries are also sub-divided into members and non-members of the United Nations.

Part 3 covers the Provinces of Origin of Overseas Filipinos. Two major sub-parts are contained herewith: a) socio-economic development and demographic data per province; and b) overseas migration data for the said province. Each province’s socio-economic development and demographic data came from existing government datasets that one of the collaborating organizations of this Statistical Almanac, the Peace and Equity Foundation, put together as a Philippine Provincial Poverty Map in 2008.

The overseas migration data per Philippine province has the following variables: a) overseas migrants per province (temporary and permanent migrants, male and female); b) estimated remittances to the said province; c) number of families receiving cash, gifts and other sources of income from abroad (also referred to as “migrant households”); d) overseas Filipino tourists in the province; and e) overseas Filipinos’ donations the province received from the Lingkod sa Kapwa Pilipino (LinKaPil) program of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas.