ON the surface, we take good care of our elderly.
In the Philippines, respect for our elders is an ingrained cultural value, as well as a legal requirement. Republic Act 9994, or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, provides a slew of benefits for those who are 60 or older, including a 20-percent discount and value-added tax exemption on essential goods and services, including medicines, medical supplies and transportation.
But beyond these benefits, recent studies indicate a deeper, emerging crisis that our policymakers and lawmakers have not yet addressed.
Rights Report Philippines, a nonprofit human rights advocacy group, cites a study published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in July 2025 that paints a grim picture of elderly poverty.
Drawing on multiple data sources, including the Family Income and Expenditure Survey, the Demographic and Health Survey, and a 2020 ADB Institute household survey, the study shows that, for many older Filipinos who live alone, the biggest source of income is not a pension or savings, but money sent home by a family member working abroad. Among older women living alone, remittances make up 39.5 percent of all income — their single largest source of financial support. For older men living alone, the share is lower but still significant, and for older couples, remittances are a major income stream alongside pension payments.
But remittances are fragile and depend on a family member overseas staying employed, staying healthy and continuing to send money. A job loss, a health crisis, a family falling-out or, as we have seen just recently, war can cut that income off entirely, leaving the elderly with no pension particularly vulnerable.
Worse, the older Filipinos get, the poorer they become. Among Filipinos aged 60 to 64, the extreme poverty rate is 4.4 percent. But among those 75 and older, this rate climbs to 8.1 percent, and the moderate poverty rate — living on between $2.15 and $3.65 a day — hits 29.9 percent. This means one in three Filipinos aged 75 and older is living on $3.65 (about P219) a day or less.
The ADB study flags those 80 and older as an emerging crisis that policymakers have barely begun to address. In 2022, this group made up 7.96 percent of all elderly Filipinos. By 2050, that share is projected to rise to 12.66 percent. In this age bracket, cancer rates have doubled globally over the past 30 years and are expected to keep rising. Cognitive decline becomes more common, and the need for specialized, long-term care grows — and the Philippines has almost no formal infrastructure to provide it.
Moreover, living with family can cover poverty, not fix it, the ADB study found. Government statistics count poverty at the household level, so when an elderly person lives in a house with working younger relatives, the combined income lifts the entire household above the poverty line, even if the elderly person has no money at all. Their individual poverty becomes invisible.
A more robust and inclusive pension system would address many of these problems. But in 2024, the Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index ranked the Philippines 46th out of 48 economies on the quality of its pension system, scoring poorly on all three measures: adequacy, sustainability and integrity.
The countries at the top — Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands — have strong regulatory frameworks, near-universal coverage, and pensions that let retirees live decently. The Philippines has almost none of that, Rights Report notes. Most informal workers are not covered at all, and benefits, for those who do receive them, are small.
As of 2022, among those 60 and older, just 40.4 percent had any kind of contributory pension, meaning nearly 60 percent of elderly Filipinos have nothing to fall back on as they grow older.
Compared to its Southeast Asian neighbors, the Philippines sits near the bottom on pension coverage and adequacy, behind Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam in the share of older people with any meaningful retirement income.
The ADB study challenges the assumption that the family will always step up. In the Philippines, as the population ages, there will be fewer workers available to support more older relatives, many of them living longer and needing more intensive care. And this is happening in a country with almost no formal long-term care infrastructure to pick up the slack, and no community-based care system to fill in where family cannot.
It is clear from the study that current support systems are not enough. The window to fix them is open but closing as more and more Filipinos reach old age. To truly help them, policymakers and lawmakers need to look beyond mere discounts and cash bonuses and birthday cakes for centenarians.