Human capital is the Philippines’ most important resource. By the late 2000s,remittances from skilled and semi-skilled Filipinos working abroad wereincreasingly vital for many families, even as the country became one of thepreferred destinations for foreign enterprises looking for educated workers incountries where their business processes could be outsourced. There were concerns, however, that the Philippines was beginning to loseits human capital edge because of critical gaps in access to social services andin the quality of those services. The Philippines responded to this by adoptingan ambitious national social agenda aimed at putting it on a more robustdevelopment path. This agenda included lengthening the secondary educationcycle and creating a social health insurance program for all citizens, a populationmanagement program, and a conditional cash transfer program (King 2020).This delivery note focuses on the conditional cash transfer program. Called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, which roughly translatesinto “building bridges for Filipino families” (Schelzig 2015), the initiative, firstimplemented in 2007, was designed to assist the poor by directly providingthem with money. Unlike conventional social assistance programs, however,the beneficiaries received the grants only if they fulfilled certain conditions.Those conditions include enrolling their children in school and ensuring thatthey maintain attendance rates of at least 85 percent, taking their children onregular clinic visits for basic health services (such as immunization and growthmonitoring), and regularly attending sessions where the beneficiaries learnedabout topics such as family planning, good citizenship, and financial literacy(Kandpal et al. 2016).
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