disability pension
CONCEPT PAPER ON DISABILITY PENSION
State measures which intend to address needs of 15% of its citizens who have disabilities include the PWD Card (for 20% discounts on medicines, medical services, etc.) and Disability Pensions from the Government Insurance Service System (GSIS). However, these are largely limited and ineffective because the discounts can only be availed of by non-poor PWDs (who are the only ones who can afford to buy medicine, go to the hospital, or eat in a restaurant in the first place), while GSIS Benefits are only for government employees. Retirement programs rely solely on contributions from employment during the lifetime of a person which is not available to people with disabilities that have not had the opportunity to work because of disability-based discrimination or the lack of work-related disability accommodation.
The main poverty-alleviation program of the government is the CCT. Over 90% of the national budget for the Department of Social Welfare is for the CCT. It addresses MDGs on maternal / infant mortality, health and education. It documents (but does not target) disability in Household Assessments which identify the poor. Furthermore, the Philippine CCT does not utilize disability in the Proxy Means Test in determining who the poor are. Thus, the presence of a PWD in a household is given little consideration. Although NHTS-PR identified 305,729 households with members with disabilities, not all of them benefits from the CCT program.
In a NCR survey conducted by PIDS in 2008, poverty incidence among households with a person with disability is 40%. This is considerably high compared to the 7.1% (the lowest among 17 regions) poverty incidence in the general population. The poverty incidence rate is higher in other regions not as developed as the NCR.
The mainstream poverty-alleviation programs will always have households with a person with disability as beneficiaries because of the fact that they are poor. Success
State measures which intend to address needs of 15% of its citizens who have disabilities include the PWD Card (for 20% discounts on medicines, medical services, etc.) and Disability Pensions from the Government Insurance Service System (GSIS). However, these are largely limited and ineffective because the discounts can only be availed of by non-poor PWDs (who are the only ones who can afford to buy medicine, go to the hospital, or eat in a restaurant in the first place), while GSIS Benefits are only for government employees. Retirement programs rely solely on contributions from employment during the lifetime of a person which is not available to people with disabilities that have not had the opportunity to work because of disability-based discrimination or the lack of work-related disability accommodation.
The main poverty-alleviation program of the government is the CCT. Over 90% of the national budget for the Department of Social Welfare is for the CCT. It addresses MDGs on maternal / infant mortality, health and education. It documents (but does not target) disability in Household Assessments which identify the poor. Furthermore, the Philippine CCT does not utilize disability in the Proxy Means Test in determining who the poor are. Thus, the presence of a PWD in a household is given little consideration. Although NHTS-PR identified 305,729 households with members with disabilities, not all of them benefits from the CCT program.
In a NCR survey conducted by PIDS in 2008, poverty incidence among households with a person with disability is 40%. This is considerably high compared to the 7.1% (the lowest among 17 regions) poverty incidence in the general population. The poverty incidence rate is higher in other regions not as developed as the NCR.
The mainstream poverty-alleviation programs will always have households with a person with disability as beneficiaries because of the fact that they are poor. Success