Development Indicators for Palawan towns

           Travel in Palawan is largely linear, and most of the travel I and other Palawan residents do is confined to the north-south national highway that runs from the island’s southern terminus of Bataraza for 280 miles before reaching El Nido in the north. There’s very little reason to travel down the unpaved roads leading into the interior of other municipalities unless you’re visiting someone who lives there. Because of this, most of my impressions of towns other than Narra are confined to what can be observed from the highway as I pass through. It’s easy to jump to conclusions about towns of tens of thousands based on one or two big houses that you see next to the highway.

            But observation is usually all we have. Socio-economic and demographic data that is reliable, or existent at all, is hard to come by in developing countries. The data we do have is national, or at best provincial. Given any country’s diversity, by telling us about every place, we learn very little about any single place. It doesn’t tell us, for example, whether my municipality of Narra, is better or worse off than its neighbors.

            So I was excited when I got the maps posted below from an ex-pat in Puerto Princesa who was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 60s in Pakistan and now does NGO work here in Palawan. Data is divided by municipality; I’m in Narra:

Child Deaths, Age 0-5

Everyone is low here, but I wonder if Narra is a bit higher than usual because our hospital is the only one in Palawan not certified by PhilHealth. My co-teacher, when she had her last child, refused to go to the hospital and instead insisted on bringing to doctor to her house to give birth there. That might not have anything to do with it though.

Also, big Philippine birthdays are 1 and 7 years old, because they’re considered hurdles in childhood- if you’ve reached those ages you’re increasingly out of the woods in terms of childhood mortality. That might be a holdover from when mortality was higher, though.

Malnourished Children, Ages 0-5

Narra is the “rice granary” of Palawan. It sort of makes sense that it has the lowest malnourishment rate.

Percentage 6-12 not attending elementary school

Yikes.

Percentage 13-16 not attending high school

Percentage households in makeshift housing

.6% in Narra. I’m curious as to the definition of makeshift housing, because there’s some pretty rickety structures in my area.

Percentage without access to safe drinking water

Most safe drinking water comes from filtration stations, with 5 gallons costing about $1. But lots of people just boil their well water, which I think is pretty safe. I wonder if unsafe means that their wells are near contaminated groundwater sources. And what’s access? Why do the far-flung islands have such high rates? They almost certainly don’t have filtration stations, so the high rates makes me think that the Province of Palawan, who compiled these statistics, made these considers boiling water unsafe. Also, Filipinos drink a ridiculously little amount of water. Hydrate or die trying, right Mike Sala?

Percentage of households below poverty level.

Seems to be the closer you get to Puerto Princesa, the better off you are. Also, most of the worst rates seem to be in the south, which is majority-Muslim in places (in Narra they’re like 5%? Super scientific. But Brooke’s Point is 40% Muslim and Bataraza is majority-Muslim). I’m not sure what kind of relationship, if any, exists between religion and socio-economic status, but I do know that in Narra Muslims are openly (if relatively mildly) discriminated against and rarely own large plots of agricultural land and are instead more often shop and stall-owners in the public market.

Percentage of households below subsistence income

This one’s pretty terrifying.

Percentage in the labor force who are unemployed

Really low rates of “unemployment” here. I’m pretty sure they’re using a broad definition of employment, as far more than 11% of the adult population survives from one odd-job to the next or are self-employed as trike drivers, which brings in very little income. It’d be interesting to see rates for people with stable employment and who are fully employed, that is, they work full-time year-round.

Percentage who are victims of violent crime

Ridiculously low throughout. I wonder how much crime is reported compared to the developed world. 0.0 isn’t right in Narra- there’s been like three people murdered here just within the last couple months. But still, violent crime is a rounding error here. It’s interesting that areas in the south that have reputations as being unsafe have only marginally higher (if at all) crime rates than the rest of Palawan. I wonder their reputation as unsafe is just a reflection of anti-Muslim prejudice.

Households without access to a sanitary toilet

Wonder what makes a sanitary toilet.

Proportion who are squatters

Really low in Narra. Narra is actually an acronym: NAtional Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administation. It was established in the early 1970s by President Marcos as a settlement area to alleviate overcrowding in other parts of the Philippines and those who moved here were given small land grants to farm. As a result, almost everyone here is from somewhere else. I’ve always heard that land ownership is less concentrated here than it in other places. That’s why I was surprised to see that Narra’s proportion of squatters is higher than most other places. That might just be a function of it being one of the island’s largest municipalities though. 

Also, I think this is one that has the most disparity throughout the island.

Women Deaths due to Pregnancy

Later I was looking for maps that would compare Palawan to other Philippine provinces and I found some data from the Philippine government that puts Palawan right in the middle with poverty incidence of between 20-30%, whereas the government of Palawan’s numbers average to over 60%. So these maps probably don’t mean that much.