This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'The politics of group-based inequality-measurement, implications, and possibilities for change', which is part of a larger research project on 'Disadvantaged groups and social mobility'.Abstract: This paper contributes to the scant body of literature on inequalities among and within ethnic groups in the Philippines by examining both the vertical and horizontal measures in terms of opportunities in accessing basic services such as education, electricity, safe water, and sanitation. The study also provides a glimpse of the patterns of inequality in Mindanao. The results show that there are significant inequalities in opportunities in accessing basic services within and among ethnic groups in the Philippines. Muslims (particularly indigenous people) are the worst-off ethnic groups while the non-indigenous/non-Muslim groups are the better-off groups. Disparities in terms of literacy rate and access to electricity and sanitation between ethnic groups, however, appear to be narrowing between 2000 and 2010.

An overall decline in inequality within a country, when assessed using nationallevel measures, can evidently obscure important variation in inequality at the subnational level. However, social planners face a choice, whose importance we argue is often underestimated, in deciding the appropriate spatial and social boundaries along which inequality should be measured at the local level. We illustrate the consequential nature of this choice by examining a historically unequal country that has experienced a recent overall decline in inequality at the national level. Drawing on census micro-data, we show the Philippines made impressive progress in reducing disparities in education and access to basic public services between 2000 and 2010. This change, however, appears less positive when inequality is measured at the subnational level using spatial and social boundaries selected for their socio-political significance in the Philippines context. Specifically, using measures of total, within-group and between-group inequality, we find important differences within and between three salient ethno-religious groupings-Muslims, indigenous persons, and everyone else-as well as within and between three major island groupings, Mindanao, Visayas, and Luzon. We consider the implication of one of these differences-variation in between-group inequality-by examining its correlation with social and political instability at the subnational level. Our findings underscore the importance of examining inequality at appropriate localized levels of analysis and, specifically, selecting carefully the spatial and social boundaries along which it should be measured.

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