In what ways is the Philippines a poor country?

[Horahngee]

@Horahngee I think you misunderstand something. The average Filipino salary is NOT $800 to $1400 USD. No fricking way dude! You kidding me? The average salary is 300 pesos a day, that's like SIX DOLLARS A DAY, for a 10 hour shift! 6 x 30 is $180. So the average salary there is LESS THAN 200 USD PER MONTH! Nowhere near what you presume. Someone must have badly misinformed you or misled you. Some even make less if they work under the table. If they make more than the minimum wage, than they are lucky. But it's not easy to get a job that pays more than that.

Okay, okay, Winston. hehehe. I am not an expert on Filipino salary amount. Unlike you who had (or are you still living there?) the opportunity to live in the Philippines to get to know the average joe's salary of blue-collar workers in the Philippines.


But daaannnggg!!! I did not know that average Filipino's salary is SIX DOLLARS PER DAY!!

I don't know how they live on that, but they do. No one can explain it well. It doesn't add up though, because their cost of living makes their salary unliveable. Many things are expensive there. So I don't get how they live on less than 200 dollars a month.

They probably leech off of us foreign males who want to date or get engaged to a filipina. Nah nah nah,....I am just kidding!

It's not enough to even eat twice a day, let alone have money for transportation or utility bills, etc. Filipinos can't explain it except to say "we use survival skills".

LOL! I like how some Filipino's, including my ex-fiancé and her family, brag about how "little" they can live off of. Yeah, some things do not add up with what a lot of Filipino families claim, and how much they actually have saved up.

[Yohan]

I'm amazed that people who have been to the Philippines don't consider the country as poor.

I am also surprised that there are people who do not consider Philippines as a poor country.
Either these people have never been in Philippines or were visiting only selected de-luxe resorts...

Even ordinary young Filipino people who have a regular job have deep financial problems.

My Filipina fosterdaughter who is living in Cebu, could graduate in the best university St. Carlo' and has now finally a job after a long search in a major Philippine bank in Cebu since about 9 months. Without my financial help she would be without any education and without home.

Her monthly salary is USD 210,- (about php 11.000,-), one week vacation, health insurance contains only medical consultation, anything else including medicine has to be paid in cash. Her cousin living together with her works since several years in one of the largest hotels in Cebu as a cashier. Her salary is php 8000,- + 1 meal a day. They are happy, at least these are stable jobs and salary is increasing a little every year.

The son of a Filipina woman I know is working on a local ship as a mechanic/taking care of the engines and carries out any small repairings of the cargo ship. His salary is php 10.000,-, at least he has free food and can sleep on the boat, no home required, no rent to pay. Much better than before he told me - he was repairing motorcycles and later on compressors, income php 7000,- and no other benefits and paid rent for a small room.

I can say, maybe half of Cebu City - which is a major city in Philippines - and around is nothing but a slum, there are plenty of street children, fraternity gang members and beggars around everywhere, especially up the hills. The city is not safe after 9:00 PM. There are other serious problems too, like supply of water, frequent brownout and blackout of electricity, public traffic is also a problem, especially during rain etc.

[Yohan]

The Philippines is a middle income, middle class country. People have enough food, color TVs, cellphones and live OK lives. There is no starvation or homelessness. All people can find some kind of job

No idea how you could get such an impression of the Philippines. Maybe calculating the average income between the few rich and the many poor?
But this is still low....

Jobless rates are often up to 50 percent or more among uneducated young people. Living in one of these many slums is not homeless?
Streetchildren often search garbage from restaurants and hotels to find some food etc.

The worldbank is listing Philippines as #116 with USD 3.660 income per person per year.
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GNIPC.pdf