Who Eats the Most? :Quantitative Analysis of Pork Barrel Distributions in the Philippines

Since a pork barrel is crucial in buying off voters, competition over the distributions among legislators has been considered as one of the main factors in producing congressional political dynamism and congressional institutions. This paper aims to test the theory of pork barrel distributions in the Philippines through OLS regression on the quantitative data of the 12th congress. The results show that some attributes of legislators are statistically significant in estimating pork barrel allocations, but, do not support the hypothesis that the legislators’ proximity to leaders is a determining factor in the distributions.

Gender-preferential intergenerational patterns in primary education attainment : a quantitative analysis of a case of rural Mindanao, the Philippines

The Philippines has achieved a relatively high standard of education. Previous researches, most of which deal with Luzon Island, have indicated that rural poverty alleviation began partly due to the increased investment in education. However, the suburban areas beyond Luzon Island have rarely been studied. This study examines a case from rural Mindanao, and investigates the determinants and factors associated with children's education, with a special focus on delays in schooling, which may be a cause of dropout and holdover incidences, as well as exploring gender-specific differential patterns. The result shows that after controlling other socioeconomic attributes, (1) delays in schooling, as well as years completed, are more favorable for girls than boys; (2) the level of maternal education is equally associated with the child(ren)’s education level regardless of their gender; and (3) paternal education is preferentially and favorably influential to the same-gender child(ren), i.e., son(s). To reduce the boy-unfriendly gender bias in primary education, this study suggests two future tasks, i.e., providing boy-specific interventions to enhance the magnitude of the father-son educational virtuous circle, and comparing the magnitude of gender-equal maternal education influence and boy-preferential paternal education influence to specify which effect is larger.