In 2012, Forbes Asia announced that the collective wealth of the 40 richest Filipino families grew $13 billion during the 2010-2011 year, to $47.4 billion--an increase of 37.9 percent. Filipino economist Cielito Habito calculated that the increased wealth of those families was equivalent in value to a staggering 76.5 percent of the country's overall increase in GDP at the time. This income disparity was far and away the highest in Asia: Habito found that the income of Thailand's 40 richest families increased by only 25 percent of the national income growth during that period, while that ratio was even lower in Malaysia and Japan, at 3.7 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. (And although critics have pointed out that the remarkable wealth increase of the Philippines' so-called ".01 percent" is partially due to the performance of the Filipino stock market, the growth of the Philippine Composite Index during that period would not account for such a dramatic disparity from neighboring countries.) Even relative to its regional neighbors, the Philippines' income inequality and unbalanced concentrations of wealth are extreme.

Meanwhile, overall national poverty statistics remain bleak: 32 percent of children under age five suffer from moderate to severe stunting due to malnutrition, according to UNICEF, and roughly 60 percent of Filipinos die without ever having seen a healthcare professional. In 2009, annual reports found that 26.5 percent of Filipinos lived on less than $1 a day -- a poverty rate that was roughly the same level as Haiti's. And a new report from the National Statistical Coordination Board for the first half of 2012 found no statistical improvement in national poverty levels since 2006. Even as construction cranes top Manila skyscrapers and the emerging beach town of El Nido unveils plans for its newest five-star resort, tens of millions of Filipinos continue to live in poverty. And according to Louie Montemar, a political science professor at Manila's De La Salle University, little is being done to destabilize the Philippines' oligarchical dominance of the elite.

"There's some sense to the argument that we've never had a real democracy because only a few have controlled economic power," he said in an interview with Agence France-Presse. "The country dances to the tune of the tiny elite."

Many observers blame the inequality on widespread corruption in local government, which makes it difficult or impossible for many Filipinos to launch small businesses. (In 2012, Transparency International, a non-governmental organization that monitors and reports a comparative listing of corruption worldwide, gave the Philippines a rank of 105 out of 176, tied with Mali and Algeria, among others.) Low levels of investment also suppress business growth: the Philippines' investment-to-GDP ratio currently stands at 19.7 percent. By comparison, the investment rate is 33 percent in Indonesia, 27 percent in Thailand, and 24 percent in Malaysia.