(Part 2)

Even amid two recent milestones — a minimum wage increase in the National Capital Region (NCR) and the Philippines' new classification as an upper-middle-income country — the author returns to the daily arithmetic that clients like Mary Grace and Nanay Laarni, the "nanay" (mother) entrepreneurs served by ASA Philippines Foundation, likely perform each day.

At the current rice price of roughly P51 per kilogram, a day's wage of P780 can purchase approximately 15.3 kilograms of rice — a meaningful improvement over the 12.1 kilograms that a day's labor could afford at the height of the 2024 crisis. That is genuine progress. However, the P780 wage level does not take effect until January 2027. By that time, if El Niño conditions unfold as forecasters warn, rice could approach P70 per kilogram, which would push purchasing power back below 12 kilograms per day of work. The Philippines is among the world's largest rice importers, leaving domestic prices highly sensitive to global supply disruptions and climate-driven shortfalls.

The question of coverage reveals an even harder truth. The historic P85 wage increase applies exclusively to formal minimum wage workers in Metro Manila. It does not extend to the informal vendor in Catarman, Samar; the backyard piggery operator in Angat, Bulacan; the home-based weaver in Marawi City; or the many Filipinos who, according to ASA's survey data, already earn less than the minimum wage. The Philippines sets minimum wages through regional tripartite boards, meaning each of the country's regions adjusts pay on its own schedule — and informal workers, who constitute a substantial share of the national workforce, fall outside the wage-order system entirely. Among the 54.6% of households who identified inflation as their second-most significant shock over the past five years, the headline-grabbing wage order may not bring direct relief, since the majority reside outside Metro Manila.

A closer look at macroeconomics suggests that upper-middle-income status may hold little significance for Mary Grace, Nanay Laarni, and millions of women in similar circumstances. The Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is calculated by aggregating the total income of all Filipinos — both at home and abroad — including doctors in the United Kingdom, nurses in the United States, engineers in the Middle East, and technology professionals in Singapore — and dividing that sum by the national population of 115 million. The resulting figure is $4,850, equivalent to approximately P23,000 per person per month.

The limitation of this average is that it obscures the country's severe income inequality. Consider a simplified example: if the incomes of one billionaire and nine minimum-wage workers are averaged together, the billionaire's extreme wealth skews the figure upward, making the group appear substantially more affluent than the majority actually is. The statistical mean, in effect, inflates the perceived income of most individuals in the group.

This observation is not intended to diminish the achievement. Rather, it underscores the importance of acknowledging the gap between the headline number and the lived reality — precisely the understanding that the nanays need from their stakeholders. Women like Mary Grace and Nanay Laarni are barely reflected in the GNI statistic in any meaningful sense.

This perspective is shared not to provoke alarm, but because the deeper lesson imparted by both the nanays and the survey data is one of hope rather than helplessness. The households that cope most effectively rarely depend on a single, large-scale solution — whether a wage order, an income reclassification, or a government program. Instead, they diversify their livelihoods and encourage additional family members to earn: a daughter engaged in digital trading, a husband taking on weekend driving work, a grandmother contributing through home-based food preparation. No single activity closes the income gap on its own, but together they begin to approximate the second and third income streams that the survey identified as missing in most households.

This principle is central to the work the author has pursued since rejoining ASA Philippines Foundation as President and CEO in November 2024. When the organization extends a loan to a member, it is rarely financing just one enterprise. Each loan becomes a household-level project — capital that transforms a single income into two or three modest ones.

Beyond livelihood-enabling loans, ASA discovered that the elusive third income earner has sometimes been present within its own offices. During numerous branch visits, staff members shared that their own mothers had been — or still were — ASA clients. To gauge how widespread this was, ASA conducted an internal survey in 2025, which found that 40% of its 12,000-strong workforce are children of its nanay clients: young men and women who grew up watching their mothers build small businesses with microloans and who are now ASA employees themselves. When asked whether they send a portion of their salaries home, many responded — often with visible pride — that they help put a younger sibling through school or have contributed to rebuilding the family home. Without deliberate planning, ASA had become not only the institution financing a nanay as a primary or secondary breadwinner, but also the employer generating her family's second or third income earner.

That discovery led the ASA Philippines Foundation board, in 2025, to double its scholarship grants from 10,000 to 20,000 children of nanay clients — not merely as a goodwill gesture, but as a strategic investment in the idea that educating one more child of a nanay today is how a household builds its own income team for tomorrow.

This does not mean government and civil society have no further role to play. The author points to Republic Act 12063 — the Enterprise-Based Education and Training (EBET) Framework Act — a new law that allows companies to train young Filipinos directly within their operations, earning a stipend while learning a trade that leads directly to employment. The historic wage order is likewise a welcome development, though its successor will ideally arrive before inflation accelerates further. The World Bank's recognition of the country's economic growth is also encouraging, but it should serve as the start of more rigorous conversations about income distribution rather than a finishing line for national ambition.

The author's appeal to fellow stakeholders — government agencies, peer NGOs, banks, and businesses large and small — is straightforward: recognize the Filipino household as the nanays and recent research have revealed it. It is not a single income earner standing alone against rising prices and recurring economic shocks. It is a team, frequently underutilized, awaiting the right opportunity for each member. The collective task is to keep creating those opportunities: a microloan in one place, a scholarship in another, a position within a company's training program, or a guaranteed fair price for a farmer before the rainy season arrives.

This call aligns with a World Bank assessment stating: "One of the biggest barriers why those in the emerging middle class segment are not moving into the secure middle class is jobs, or the lack of high-quality jobs… aside from jobs, the government must also improve on addressing gaps in insurance and social protection systems. The World Bank said a single typhoon or illness can push Filipinos back to poverty."

Against this backdrop, the author recalls the folding bed tucked into the corner of Mary Grace's carinderia (small eatery) — and her habit of rising at night to feed a stranger who knocked on her door, even while carrying burdens few could imagine. She is not waiting for the wage order to reach her directly, nor will the upper-middle-income label alter her daily cash-flow challenges. She will continue doing what is available to her: working harder, identifying one additional income stream after another, and holding her household together one day at a time.

The reasonable assumption is that she and other nanays simply ask that the rest of society — collectively — find additional ways to engage with them and their families before the next economic shock arrives at someone else's door.

(Read Part 1 here: )

Rafael C. Lopa is the President and CEO of ASA Philippines Foundation, a microfinance non-government organization serving women entrepreneurs from low-income communities across the Philippines.