BAGUIO CITY – The Filipino family of the twenties prefers fewer children.
Current fertility rate for the nation this year stands at 2.431 births per woman, a 0.94 percent decline from 2023. Birth rate in 2023 was 19 births per 1000 women, a 1.01 decline from 2022. It continued to drop in 2022 and 2021.
In the last nine years, birth rate among Filipino mothers across the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) as well as in other areas in the Philippines slid to 1.9 children, a decrease from 2.7 children in 2017.
Fertility rate refers to the number of children a Filipino woman would have by the time she reaches the age of 50 under a given fixed fertility schedule. It’s sometimes referred to as completed family size. Total fertility rate is the average number of births per 100 females aged 15-49 years.
Such statistics reveal the fertility rate among the majority of Filipino mothers continues to plummet to two children or less.
What does the statistics reveal? The demographic Philippine picture as studied by Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)SA points to a discovery that in the last ten years, the desired family size presses on to decrease to four from five children, or even lower.
As birth rates drop across Asia and beyond, the Philippines still stands as having the highest fertility ratios in the region.
As the Philippine economy transcended a chipper outlook starting in the 1960s, birth rates, too, followed a dip, much the same pattern experienced by other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
With more than 116 million people, government officials see the downtrend as a positive outlook. And no less than President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., expounding the country cannot achieve broad economic success without addressing demographic challenges.
Reining in the population is great news for the Philippine government. Worldwide, however, it will be a global problem when it will have to prepare for the time that exports of labor coming from the Philippines might flow to a trickle.
PSA’s survey correlates with a study previously conducted by the University of the Philippines (UP) Population Institute which found that in the last two decades, the desired family size decreased to four from five children in 1978, to just three to four.
Called “Reproductive Intentions of Philippine Women,” the UP-led study was supported by the Commission of Population and Development (PopCom).
Among others, the government’s PSA and the UP in-depth studies sought to gauge the progress of the government’s Family Planning (FP) program.
In line with the Department of Health’s (DOH) Family Planning Program committed to provide responsive policy direction and ensure universal access to correct information, medically safe, legal, non-abortifacient, effective and culturally modern FP methods, FP is the foremost strategy in reducing unintended pregnancies and reducing incidence of unsafe abortion and maternal deaths.
In the country, the DOH pointed out 58 percent of married women and 41 percent of sexually active unmarried women aged 15-49 use any method of FP. Use of FP. Most popular FP modern methods among married women are the pills (20 percent), female sterilization (9 percent) and 5 percent for injectables.
Sexually active unmarried women use male condoms (12 percent) and the pill (7 percent), most often among modern FP methods.
In the country, the median age at first menstruation among women is 13.0 years, meaning, half of women had their first period before the age of 13 and the rest had their first period after that age.
Overall, 55 percent of women aged 15-49 are currently in union, meaning that they are either married (36 percent) or are living together in consensual unions (19 percent). Half of Filipino women aged 25-49 were married by 22.8 years, the median age at first marriage.
Rural women marry at a younger age than urban women (21.7 years as compared to 23.8 years).
Median age at first sexual intercourse is 20.7 years among women of age 25-49. Median age at first sex among women varies by region, from 20,0 years in Northern Mindanao to 21,3 years in highland Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).
Median age at first birth for women of age 25-49 is 23.6 years old. It means that half of women of age 25-49 give birth for the first time before this age. On average, urban women give birth for the first time over one year later than rural women (24.4 years compared to 22.7 years).
Marriage in the Philippines is legal at 18 years, although permitted at younger ages in Muslim Mindanao. Given such situation, one percent of adolescent women of age 15-19 were married before age 15, Only 2 percent of women of age 24-49 were reported they were first married by age 15 and 14 percent were first married by age 18.
Similarly, 1 percent of adolescent women of age 15-19 had sexual intercourse before the age of 15. Very few young women have had a live birth before the age of 15.
Overall, 5 percent of adolescent women of age 15-19 have ever been pregnant; 4 percent have given birth; 2 percent were pregnant at the time of the survey and less than 1 percent have ever had a pregnancy loss.
Teenage pregnancy in the Philippines generally declines as household wealth increases, with teenage pregnancy being highest among those in the lowest wealth quintile and lowest among those in the highest wealth quintile, according to the government demographers.
Government demographers also pointed out that fertility in the Philippines generally declines with increasing household wealth, from 3 or 4 children per woman in the poorest households to 1 or 2 children per woman in the wealthiest households.
A typical Filipino mother, the PSA noticed, is relatively young, aged 20-34. In two out of three cases, such a Mom can be a rural resident. The highest level of education that she has reached is high school or college undergraduate.
On the average, rural women have more children than urban women (2.2 rural children versus 1.7 urban children).
Philippine fertility has been steadily declining since the 1970s, factors pointed to the drop being women empowerment and easier access of Filipino Moms to FP and birth control.
But the decline since 2017 “was the sharpest ever recorded,” PopCom stated. PSA also discovered that many married women revealed they no longer desire having more children or would prefer to delay childbirth for two or more years.
As indicated by the studies, a large proportion of Filipino women have achieved their child-bearing goals and do not want to add more children. They approve of FP and think it is acceptable for FP messages to be broadcast on radio and television.
Social media (64 percent) is the most common source of FP messages. Fifty-four percent of women reported having seen an FP message on TV and 35 percent at a community meeting. Still, 17 percent of women were not exposed to FP in the 12 months before the studies were conducted.
Crude Birth Rate or the measure of natural growth or increase of a population decreased from 23.1 to 14.1, (or 14 live births per 1000 population) a 38.9 percent decrease revealed the 2020 Philippine health Statistics of the Epidemiology Bureau of DOH.
Three babies are born every minute in the Philippines.
DOH Philippine Health Statistics also discovered that more male babies were born alive in 2020 than females babies, or a sex ratio of 109 males 100 females. Such a ratio means that for every 109 alive baby boys, there corresponded 100 alive baby girls born.
For over a decade to the present, DOH statistics show that for all live births, the number of male babies always exceeds the number of female babies. Consistently, the estimated population reveals the Philippines is a male dominating country in terms of number.
A fine example is in the highlands of Cordillera where the sex ratio was computed in 2020 at 105:100, meaning there were 105 males for 100 females in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).
Such a situation gave rise to ongoing humors that in CAR, many males are “baak” or, “naba-akan,” or in English, means wifeless or old bachelors – with no hope in sight to get hitched.
No wonder that these Cordilleran “baaks” are a timeless source of hilarity that resonate across generations, for they are considered masters at being single, despite the fact that they pine to trade their bachelor’s degree for a marriage certificate.
And that finally, after so much effort in finally roping a lassie and both getting married, the baak will find out for himself that the lady he married reveals a secret: that she prefers not having children.
As one aging baak, Brixton Altima, residing at La Trinidad, Benguet, but farming successfully in the farmlands that straddle Halsema Highway, profoundly expressed to Herald Express one time in his moment of solitary soliloquy:
“I dream of getting married and having children – lots of them. And never mind if sometimes, the woman I’ll marry has a tongue that can cut a man to smithereens.”
“After all, “Altima continued, “There is not in the whole range of musical combinations, a sweeter toned instrument than the tongue of a wife, when out of abundance of a heart of gentleness, affection and devotion, speaks the soothing of tenderness and diffuses gladness to a disheartened soul of a husband.”
Excellently said, Altima. You’ll someday find the woman of your dreams and the dream to have as many children. (Altima always makes a point to have a copy of Herald Express).
