Summary of General Discussion on “In Search of a Strategy for Making Growth More Pro-Poor in the Philippines” Unavailable

The paper analyzes poverty incidence in the provinces of the Philippines, by regressing a combination of time-varying determinants, interactions between those variables, and “initial conditions” around the starting point of the panel observations. The comments in the general discussion centered on the time-varying determinants of provincial poverty included in the estimation. Bhanupong Nidhiprabha noted that the analysis had left out some crucial variables, such as family planning and financial inclusion. Moreover, he said, the authors needed to take into account agricultural pricing policies, food price fluctuations, and weather conditions. Iris Claus asked how the authors accounted for different costs of living and inflation rates across the provinces. As noted by Nidhiprabha, food prices have fluctuated significantly over the period of estimation and will have affected rural and urban households differently. Somkiat Tangkitvanich pointed out the potential problem of reverse causality with the child mortality variable. Lower child mortality may be...