Thank you for shedding light on this problem. I think you will find the book of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two leading development economists from MIT. The book is available at Fullybooked and has a very accessible website: https://pooreconomics.com/.

Christopher

Indonesia : USD 2.85-7.54
China : USD 4.72-8.14
Thailand : USD 7.45-10.07
Malaysia : USD 8.93-10.5
Philippines NCR: 419-456 peso = USD 10.19-11.09
Philippines IVA : 255-349.5 peso = USD 6.2-8.5
Philippines III : 285-336 peso = USD 6.93-8.17
Philippines VII : 260-305 peso = USD 6.32-7.41

What do you think why daily wages in the Philippines is relatively higher compare to neighbor country?
And that also mean that:
– cost of living in the Philippines is relatively higher
– business competitiveness in the Philippines is relatively lower
But unemployment rate in the Philippines still higher than the other countries.

Maybe some of the problem is:
– Philippines families has more children
More money& time spent for raising children
Not enough nutritious food for the children
Not enough good education, since the increase in number of public school and teacher is lower than the increase of new born babies

– Only a few Filipino can manage to save or maybe invest their money, let say in mutual fund, UITF
Mutual fund & UITF will use those money to buy share of public company, that will help those public company grow.
It means Filipino can get some profit from those investment in mutual fund.

If each person received an increase of 10% every year on their salaries
And they can manage to invest 20% of their income in investment that give 12% profit every year
After 10 years, their investment’s profit is equal to their salary

– Business competitiveness is low
Not so much competition available
Office & factory tend to hire more people to finish an activity that can be done by fewer people
(This means company must pay those additional people with standard minimum wage)
Just imagine if company can hire less people & pay them better, so the company become more efficient & have another additional extra money to build another factory. And that mean they will hire another people to work for them.

I think an improvement on Philippines economy, lower poverty rate & lower gap between rich and poor is possible, if there is someone who want to give a new insight, new habit for every Filipino.

The salaried Filipinos are the most tax burdened people in the planet. Consider:
About 20% of salary is withheld for income taxes plus more for SS, medicare and etc.
Also, 12% VAT is added to most purchases.
And added to the insult, Filipinos pay tolls for roads that should have been built by the government from taxes collected.