Geography Brown Bag Colloquium Series: Living Alone in the Philippines

To cap off the Geography Brown Bag Colloquium Series of the first semester, Prof. Maria Celeste Hermida from the UP Department of Geography gave a lecture entitled, "Living Alone in the Philippines," on November 22, 2019. The phenomenon of living alone is prevalent in many parts of the world and there is also a rise of solitary dwellers in the Philippines.

Her interest in the topic was sparked after watching a National Geographic documentary about a man whose job is to look after and clean up the homes of the deceased who died lonely deaths –  known in Japan as kodokushi or deaths by people who are living alone.  The living alone phenomenon is common in Japan whose population is known to be rapidly aging. This specific choice of most people to live alone gave rise to these “fractured connections,” with some even going as far as lonely deaths that go undiscovered for a month or more with the longest being eight months.

This prompted her to search for similar occurrences around the world and discovered that there is a surge in Northern European countries where 40-50% of the adult population live by themselves citing Sweden as a notable case in which the living alone population consists not only of aging adults but also of the younger generation as well. Meanwhile, Asia’s living alone population consists of only 2-3% with China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as the notable exceptions where the percentage of their living alone population closely matches that of Northern Europe.

Filipinos are known to be family-centered: with familial bonds that manifest in the forms of not only nuclear but also of extended families. It also features a bilaterally extended kinship in which relatives on both maternal and paternal sides are considered to be of equal importance with regards to familial ties and property/ wealth transfer.  The traditional Filipino family also greatly values reciprocity where the parents are expected to care and provide for their children and in turn, the children at a later time are expected to care and provide for their elderlies as well. A shift in this setup has been observed in the recent years with the rise of solo parenthood which in turn also affected the numbers of transnational families and female-led households. This transition can be observed by declining fertility rates, improving longevity, delayed entry to marriage, an increasing cohabitation and union dissolution, and the rise of solitary dwellers.

The importance of looking into the living alone phenomenon in the Philippines lies in the perceived economic, psychological, and mental vulnerability of this population. The rise of solitary dwellers also translates to a high demand for land and housing which in turn would further raise their costs. Single households also challenge community development in terms of cohesion, participation, network, and connections.