Overseas Filipino Workers at cruise ships | Photo by Alonso Reyes on Unsplash
Acts of patriotism can support prosperity when they translate into concrete behaviors—such as paying taxes, investing at home, and demanding competent governance—but patriotism alone does not explain why some countries, like the Philippines, lag behind regional peers or depend heavily on overseas employment.
It helps to separate patriotism as emotional identification (“love of country”) and patriotism as practical commitment (following laws, paying taxes, staying to build institutions, voting intelligently, investing domestically).
Research suggests the second form—behavioral patriotism—matters far more for prosperity than the first.
Empirical work on patriotism and economic outcomes is still limited, but a few patterns emerge. In cross-country studies, higher self‑reported patriotism is associated with a stronger “home bias” in investment: a 10 percent increase in patriotism predicts about a 3–5 percent increase in domestic stock holdings, which can channel more capital to national firms. More patriotic societies tend to have smaller “shadow economies,” meaning less unreported and untaxed income, and correspondingly higher tax compliance.
Patriotism often increases consumer preference for domestic products, supporting local industry and jobs when domestic firms are reasonably competitive.
Patriotism can strengthen support for redistribution and investment through the state, because citizens care more about compatriots and national outcomes.
However, there is also evidence of “diversionary nationalism,” where elites exploit patriotic sentiment to distract from inequality or poor performance rather than fix them, which can undermine real prosperity. Studies of national pride show that high pride in economically unequal societies can sometimes correlate with tolerance for corruption and weak institutions.
So higher patriotism can be economically beneficial when it is coupled with effective institutions and decent governance. It motivates concrete economic behaviors (tax payment, domestic investment, long‑term nation‑building) rather than just symbolic gestures.
The Philippine Case: Prosperity Deficits
On the indicators mentioned, the Philippines indeed trails many regional peers. Life expectancy at birth in the Philippines was about 69.9 years in 2024, below high‑performing Asian neighbors like Japan or Singapore, where life expectancy exceeds 80.
The Global Hunger Index classifies the Philippines as having a “moderate” level of hunger, with a 2024 score of 14.4 and significant child wasting and stunting, indicating persistent undernutrition despite middle‑income status. Unemployment and underemployment remain structural issues, with a chronic surplus of labor relative to quality jobs, especially outside urban centers; this drives a large share of workers into insecure informal work or overseas employment. Rural development has lagged, with agriculture productivity, rural infrastructure, and services improving more slowly than urban areas, contributing to enduring rural poverty. Currency stability for the Philippine peso has historically been weaker than for regional reserve or export powerhouses, reflecting lower savings, trade imbalances, and vulnerability to external shocks.
These indicators help explain why millions of Filipinos seek work abroad: domestic job creation and productivity growth have not kept pace with the country’s labor force and demographic trends.
Patriotism in the Philippines appears to be a strong feeling but with weak translation.
Qualitative analyses of Philippine political culture note that “love of country” is widely professed—seen in rituals, symbolism, and diaspora remittances—but often does not translate into sustained civic action or institutional strengthening.
Overseas Filipino workers show a form of economic patriotism through remittances, buttressing household consumption and foreign exchange earnings; yet remittances are a private coping strategy for state failure to create jobs, not a substitute for domestic development. A highly politicized nationalism often focuses on personalities and short‑term issues, while structural problems—agrarian reform, educational quality, public health, industrial upgrading—receive less consistent citizen pressure. Distrust of government, repeated corruption scandals, and uneven rule of law dampen willingness to pay taxes or invest domestically for the long term, even among people who feel emotionally patriotic.
“The Philippines has patriots—but exports their effort. Filipino patriotism is real, but channeled through remittances from abroad, coping with domestic underemployment instead of confronting its causes at home, …”
In short, the Philippines shows strong symbolic patriotism, but weaker behavioral patriotism in the form of tax compliance, civic engagement, and staying and investing in domestic institutions.
By contrast, many more prosperous countries—whether in East Asia, Europe, or North America—have used patriotism as a civic and economic practice. Citizens of highly patriotic countries, such as the United States in cross-national samples, display strong domestic investment and relatively low shadow economies, meaning more income is taxed and available for public goods. Patriotism is harnessed through narratives that emphasize competent state-building, meritocratic institutions, and shared sacrifice, which support broad-based investments in infrastructure, health, and education. In export-oriented economies, economic narratives of national success encourage citizens to accept long-term industrial policies and training regimes, aligning individual effort with national economic upgrading.
In the Philippines, some economists even extol the virtues of importing even the most basic staple, rice. Arguing that cheap imports are more beneficial while ignoring the net effect of such a policy, as it de facto exports jobs. Countries that export rice to the Philippines heavily subsidize their farmers to keep jobs on their shores while the Philippines policymakers do the ‘lazy work’ of imposing tariffs on those exports.
Crucially, though, these societies also have strong bureaucratic capacity and relatively predictable legal environments, political systems where public pressure to “do right by the country” can actually force policy change.
In other words, they have channels through which patriotism can be converted into policy and institutional outcomes.
Dependence on overseas employment changes the way patriotism functions. For sending countries like the Philippines, patriotism often becomes an identity resource for migrants—maintained through remittances, cultural practices, and concern for homeland politics—while most productive effort unfolds abroad.
Remittances stabilize consumption and the balance of payments, but they can reduce pressure on domestic elites to undertake difficult reforms, because foreign labor and remitted income partly mask the lack of domestic job creation. When large shares of the most ambitious, skilled, or mobile citizens leave, the domestic capacity to reform institutions and industries can weaken, even if those citizens are emotionally patriotic.
This creates a paradox. Overseas workers may be among the most patriotic in sentiment and sacrifice. Yet the structural effect of mass labor export is to relieve domestic unemployment without building the home economy’s productive base. So the problem is not lack of patriots; it is the location and channeling of their effort.
Available evidence does not support a simple claim that richer countries have “more patriots” in the sense of stronger emotional attachment.
In fact, some relatively less prosperous regions (the Americas, Africa, Middle East) report higher average levels of patriotism than richer European or East Asian countries, suggesting that emotional patriotism is not tightly correlated with GDP per capita. The economic power of patriotism depends more on behavior: tax morale, domestic investment, support for rule of law, and public willingness to discipline corrupt elites.
Thus, what distinguishes more prosperous countries is not simply more patriots, but a higher proportion of citizens whose patriotic concern translates into compliance with and pressure for effective institutions. States that can leverage patriotic sentiment into coherent development strategies and fairer social contracts.
For the Philippines, this suggests that the key deficit is not patriotic feeling, but the mechanisms that connect that feeling to domestic job creation, rural development, and improved social indicators.
Patriotism is not a flag; it is a balance sheet. Countries prosper when citizens’ love of country shows up in tax returns, domestic portfolios, career choices, and voting behavior, not only in anthem‑singing.
The Philippines has patriots—but exports their effort. Filipino patriotism is real, but channeled through remittances from abroad, coping with domestic underemployment instead of confronting its causes at home, which helps explain why life expectancy, hunger, and rural poverty lag behind neighbors.
Prosperous countries organize patriotism into institutions. In richer countries, patriotic concern is more often converted into tax-paying, rule-following, and policy pressure, strengthening schools, hospitals, and industries that make staying at home rational and rewarding.
If a nation’s most hardworking citizens must leave to live decently, is the problem a lack of patriotism—or a lack of a state worthy of their patriotism? That line of reasoning correlates patriotism and prosperity without falling into the trap of blaming ordinary citizens for structural failures.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Crispin Fernandez advocates for overseas Filipinos, public health, transformative political change, and patriotic economics. He is also a community organizer, leader, and freelance writer.
