"Better to learn late than never." Does this old proverb fit Proclamation 1489? In this just-published document, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo reports that the overdue national census counted 88,574,614 Filipinos as of August 1 last year.

Thus, there are four of us today where only one stood in 1948. That was when we had first post-war census. Wait there's more. Earlier, the United Nations Population Division projected that there'd be 86 million Filipinos by 2010. The President's proclamation means we overshot that forecast by a good three years.

DDT spraying, at the end of World War II, brought malaria to heel and cut death rates by half. Look at these "milestones:" 1960 census - 27 million Filipinos who increased to 36.6 million by 1970. Ten years later, the census counted 48 million. By 1990, this crested at 60.7 million. And the turn-of-the-century census reported 76.5 million.

And now is it 88.5 million? Or are there more of us really? This present headcount should have been conducted in 2005. But Congress, which funds just about everything else, didn't allocate a census budget until two years later. Scientists, researchers and policy-makers, in interim, "flew blind."

Internal Revenue Allotments, for instance, are sliced by patronage-hungry congressmen partly on basis of population. The slabs were cut using data that had been outstripped by demographic changes. Cebu's population ballooned to 3.85 million today from 3.51 in year 2000. In-migration into urbanized areas and slow decline in fertility, saw to that. Are today's rice imports jiggered in accordance with the new headcount?

Others had to navigate by figures culled from previous censuses. "Every 24 hours, 5,800 kids are born," ex-health undersecretary Mario Tagiwalo explains. "That tacks on the equivalent of three more barangays daily."

A governor or mayor has tenure of three years. "In that span of time, 6.4 million more will be born," he adds. "That's equal to one whole Western Visayas region."

Or take the President. Given a ban on re-election, a President serves for six years.

From the time a President is sworn in office, at Luneta, and leaves Malacanang six years later, roughly 12.6 million will have been born. "That's equivalent to another National Capital Region," Tagiwalo adds.

Given the slow decline in fertility rates, government statisticians, in fact, expected the 2007 census would show that population breached the 90.4 million mark, admits National Economic and Development Authority's Augusto Santos. It did not.

Santos papers over misgivings that roil demographers, even journalists. Census-takers, in 2007, stumbled into "a high rate of non-response." Others didn't make needed visits.

"We didn't enumerate everyone," admits an official. Ad-hoc measures massaged the proclamation draft. The President wanted it by February 29.

A partial enumeration, however, produces the fiction of a smaller population. But no body is served by fudged data, let alone the President. There are doubts emerging whether flaws in the 2007 census will permit comparison with the previous censuses.

Demographers at UP, Xavier University, San Carlos Office of Population Studies, the UN and other centers are starting to analyze the complete results.

In due time, we'll hear from them. The Arroyo regime, in the meantime, reels from criticism, by reputable economists like Ateneo's Cielito Habito and UP's Felipe Miranda, for primping up family income data. These are "sunshine press releases." We need more controversy in this minefield that is population like a hole in the head.

"For more than 30 years now, the 'population debate' has divided segments of Philippine society," observes sociologist John Carroll, SJ. The debate has been marred "by mutual suspicions, one-sided arguments and caricatures of opposing positions.

"The outcome has been two groups, each dominated by its more 'hard-line' spokespersons," he writes in A Balancing Act, published by the Philippine Center for Population and Development. "(They) talk past each other, without taking time to listen. We must move past the deadlocked debate into an area of respectful discussion."

"Rapid population growth alone can not explain poverty," Dr Ernesto Pernia and 21 other colleagues in the UP School of Economics stress. "Bad governance, high wealth and income equality and weak economic growth are the main causes."

The UP economists underscore the "dependency burden": Poverty incidence, among families, with one child is 9.8 percent. But where there are nine children, penury blankets over half (57.3 percent) Seven out of ten unplanned pregnancies are aborted, a UP Population Institute study notes.

"Are church social teachings our best kept secret?", "Are church social teachings our best kept secret? In fact, Vatican Council documents support responsible family planning.

They ask parents to "thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare, and that of their children, those already born and which the future may bring. They should also consult the interests of the family group, temporal society and the Church."

Will Proclamation 1489 help move the population debate from deadlock to debate? Or will it muddle the controversy further?

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)