The Province of Cebu : Demographic
Developments in the 20^th Century

The province of Cebu, located in the center of the Philippine Archipelago, consists of the Philippine Archipelago consists of the island of Cebu, the Bantayan Islands to the west of Cebu’s northern tip, the Camotes Islands to the east, and Mactan and Olango Islands fronting the shoreline of Cebu City on Cebu Island’s eastern coast. The province of Cebu , originally created by the Spanish, was established in the form we know it today in the course of the American administrative reorganization of the country on 18 April 1901 by the Philippine Commission through enactment of the "Provincial Government Act" of 6 February 1901 (Willoughby 1905, 224-250). In its current configuration, the Province extends over a land area of approximately 4,800 km2. Of this area, the Island of Cebu covers some 4,400 km2, the Bantayan Islands about 143 km2, the Camotes 225 km2, and Mactan and neighboring islands with Lapu-Lapu City and the Municipality of Cordova, 68 km2.

At the present time, the Province is divided into five cities and 48 municipalities with a total of 1,202 barangays (villages in rural parts of the province and neighborhoods in built-up city areas). This organizational set-up of the Province has been remarkably stable over time. During the 20^th century, the number of barangays increased only slowly, from 1,028 in 1903 to 1,202 in 1990 and the 53 cities and municipalities extant in 1990, all but the Municipality of Tabuelan appear in the Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903. Tabuelan was created from Tuburan in 1953. Not any longer in the existence in 1990 were five municipalities appearing in the 1903 Census: Mabolo and Pardo had been incorporated in Cebu City, Santa Rosa (Olango Island) in Lapu-lapu City (Opon), Nueva Caceres in Oslob, and San Sebastian in Samboan.

Cebu Province has been, and continues to be the demographic, social and economic center of the Southern Philippines. Under the present administrative setup of the country, Cebu Province, together with Bohol, Negros Oriental and Siquijor, constitutes the central Visayas Region (Region VII), which is flanked by the Western Visayas (Region VI) and the Eastern Visayas (Region VIII). These three geographic sections are nearly identical with three linguistically different areas in the Central Visayas, Cebuano is spoken, in the Western Visayas, Ilongo, and Waray in most of the Eastern Visayas.

During the first decades of the current century, it was the area known today as Central Visayas that contained the largest share of the combined population of the three Visayas regions. By the time of the Second World War, this position had been taken over by the Western Visayas. In 1990, the latter had a population share of 41 percent, compared to 35 percent for the Central Visayas. Traditionally, the Eastern Visayas Region has been the least populated and, since 1945, also the slowest growing part. During the 20^th Century, the Visayas regions have provided the bulk of migrants who, until the 1960’s, streamed mainly southward into the sparsely populated Island of Mindanao, where agricultural opportunities abounded, and since then primarily into the industrially and commercially developing provinces surrounding the country’s capital city of Manila on the northern Island of Luzon. As a result of this constant drain, the population of the three Visayas regions has grown at a slower pace than the populations on the islands of Luzon and Mindanao. The 1990 Census shows for the first time that the population of Mindanao is outsizing that of the Visayas.

During the two decades preceding the last war, Cebu was one of the slowest growing provinces in the country. It was only in the 1970s that population growth in the province began to equal the average growth of the country. The primary reason for this acceleration was the expansion of Cebu City and the emergence of Metropolitan Cebu, the latter today a conglomerate of three adjacent cities and seven municipalities, with Cebu City as a center and a bustling economy. At present, Metro Cebu, with a population of 1.4 million, is the second largest metropolitan area in the country after Metro Manila.

Despite the heavy out-migration which the Province of Cebu has experienced since the end of World War II, it has maintained, throughout the 20^th century, its status as the country’s largest province population-wise. The first population census under American auspices held in 1903 counted some 645,000 ‘civilized’ residents in Cebu Province. At the time of the country’s latest census in 1990, the 1903 figure had quadrupled to 2.6 million. There were only two other provinces in the country in 1990 with populations excess of two million Pangasinan in northern Luzon, and Cebu’s neighboring province of Negros Occidental.

Until the end of World War II, Cebu was not only the largest province in the country population wise but also the most densely populated outside of the Manila area. According to the census reports, average population density in the province stood at 128 persons per km at the beginning of the century, 210 persons per km around the middle of this century, and 518 persons per km in 1990. However despite this increase, Cebu had dropped to fifth place at the time of the last census with respect to provincial population density, ranking behind such provinces as Cavite (893 persons per km). Laguna (778), and Pampanga (702), all of them bordering Metro Manila or located close to it.

Population growth in an area as large as the Province of Cebu does not proceed uniformly but tends to vary from one locality and time period to the next depending on a number of external factors.

As one would expect, Cebu Province as a whole experienced its lowest population growth in this century during the war years, as indicated by the growth rates of its various geographic sections for he intercensal period 1939-48. Many Cebuanos and probably other Filipinos apparently sought refuge in the somewhat out-of-the-way Bantayan Islands which, during the war years achieved their highest population growth ever in this century. The Province registered its highest population growth rate in the twentieth century in the early 1970 and 75.

The City of Cebu had its peak period of growth during the twenty years before World War II, when its average annual population growth rate exceeded four percent. While the City recovered relatively quickly from the depressed growth rate during the war and grew at an average annual rate of more than 3.5 percent during the first 15 years afterward, population growth in the City ever since has been on a slow by steady decline, a trend which, if the 1990 census is any indication, is not only continuing but accelerating. Beginning with the 1970s. The role of provincial growth center was taken over by the cities and municipalities of Metro Cebu surrounding Cebu City.

The northern and southern portions of the province followed somewhat different population growth patterns during the current century. Before and during World War II, it were the municipalities south of the cities of Cebu and Toledo whose population growth had more or less stagnated. After the war, population growth in the South steadily increased. For the past decades, it has averaged a little over two percent annually, a figure not too far bellow the average national growth rate. The population growth rate of the northern portion of Cebu Island during this century has been on a long-term decline and, since the end of the last war, been the northwestern part of Cebu Island was the only one in the entire province with an average annual population growth rate of less than one percent.

Since 1970, Philippine census reports divide populations into urban and rural and provide separate tabulations for each of them. Which portion of the population is to be considered urban is decided on the basis of the country’s official definition of ‘urban places’. This definition, which is applied to individual barangays, relies primarily on demographic characteristics as population size and density but specifies also a number of secondary criteria such as physical, social and economic features that an urban place is supposed to posses. Among these features are street patterns, public buildings, facilities and services, economic establishments, and specific labor force characteristics.

One feature of the Philippine definition of "urban" is that it provides for the reclassification of all rural barangays located in the city or municipality as soon as the latter reaches and average density of 1,000 persons per km2 and regardless of the situations in the reclassified barangays themselves.

In Cebu Province, such reclassification involves 32 of the 43 barangays in the municipalities of Consolacion and Talisay alone. By 1990, these municipalities had reached or exceeded the density of 1,000 per km2 and been declared urban in their entireties. It is doubtful that all of the reclassified barangays, especially those located in the mountainous hinterlands of Consolacion and Talisay, had acquired many or even any of the urban characteristics listed in the urban definition aside from "location in a municipality with high average population".

In view of the Province’s large population increase, the continued reliance on average municipal population density as criterion for the urbanity of every barangay in that municipality may distort true urban-rural differences.

METRO CEBU is here defined as being composed of cities of a) Cordoba, b) Consolacion, c) Liloan, and d) Compostela ( north ); e) Talisay , 1) Minglanilla, and g) Naga ( south ). As of the present, Metro Cebu is not a formally established unit with administrative functions but rather a planning unit of, among others, the Regional Development Council of Region VII. During the last decade, Metro Cebu has emerged as a viable social and economic unit in its own right and established its peculiar identity and agenda which any future planning will have to take into account.