“Why Filipinos Work Abroad: The Hidden Cost of Land Monopoly”
Every year, millions of Filipinos leave their families behind to work overseas. They serve as nurses, engineers, seafarers, domestic helpers — contributing sweat and skill to the economies of other nations. Their remittances are hailed as the “lifeblood” of the Philippine economy, propping up consumption and even real estate. [1]
But beneath the surface of this so-called success story is a deeper failure — a structural problem the nation has long refused to confront. The overseas Filipino worker (OFW) phenomenon is not a triumph of labor mobility. It is a symptom of something broken at home: a monopoly over land that has choked economic opportunity for the many and rewarded unearned wealth to the few.
This is not just a political opinion. It is an economic diagnosis first articulated by 19th-century economist Henry George, and mathematically formalized a century later by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
### The Problem: Land Without Labor, Labor Without Land
Henry George, in his classic work *Progress and Poverty*, argued that poverty amid progress stems from the monopolization of land — a natural resource that no one produced, but which everyone needs to live and work. When access to land is limited to a privileged few, the majority are shut out of the opportunity to produce and thrive.
In the Philippine countryside, this remains painfully true. Despite land reform programs like CARP, vast estates remain in the hands of a small elite. Landless farmers till soil they do not own. Others migrate to cities only to find crowded slums and informal economies. When neither rural nor urban life offers decent livelihoods, people look abroad.
This is where George's insights connect to modern economics. In 1977, Joseph Stiglitz formalized the “Henry George Theorem,” showing that in an efficient economy, the value of public goods (like education, roads, sanitation) should equal the total land rents — the unearned income landowners receive simply because they own land in a desirable location. [2]
When land rents are privately captured, rather than publicly taxed, governments are starved of revenue for public goods. And when land itself is held idle or underused due to speculation, jobs and housing never materialize. The result: mass underemployment, emigration, and economic dependence on remittances — not on local productivity.
### OFWs: The Human Cost of Economic Failure
The decision to work abroad is deeply personal, often noble. But the scale of labor exportation from the Philippines is not a cultural trait. It’s a national red flag. If decent work were available at home — if land, capital, and enterprise were accessible — millions would not be forced to leave spouses, children, and communities behind.
Yes, OFW remittances boost GDP. But they also mask a deeper dysfunction. The Philippine economy looks healthy on paper, while hollowing out its workforce and fracturing families.
### The Solution: Reform the Ground Beneath Our Feet
The Philippines does not lack labor, intelligence, or creativity. What it lacks is access to land and opportunity, because too much of that land has been hoarded, speculated on, or left idle.
The solution is both moral and practical:
* Tax land value, not labor or capital. This incentivizes productive use of land and discourages speculation. * Redistribute idle land to farmers and workers who will use it. * Invest land rents into public services, which raise land value and create a virtuous cycle of growth and opportunity.
This is not utopian. Cities like Hong Kong have funded themselves largely through land leasing. Singapore reclaims and allocates land as a public good. Even the Philippines once flirted with this logic during the Commonwealth era, when land reform was part of nation-building.
It is time to revisit these principles. Not because they are old, but because they remain urgently true.
### A Nation Worth Coming Home To
If we want a Philippines where people go abroad by choice, not by necessity, we must fix what’s broken at home. That begins with reclaiming the wealth of the nation — not from its workers, but from its land.
We owe it to every OFW who sends money home while missing birthdays, graduations, and final goodbyes. Their sacrifice should not be permanent policy. It should be a wake-up call.
Let’s stop exporting our people and start investing in our land.