Ernesto was born in Tubigon, Bohol. He is married to Dr. Elena E. Pernia, a Ph.D in Communication at UP and blessed with three children. He is a Doctor of Economics who finished his Ph.D. at the University of California. He is presently a Professor of Economics and Director of Public Affairs of UP School of Economics. Simultaneously, he is the Vice Chairman of the Division of Social Science, National Research Council. Dr. Pernia was the Lead Economist of the Economics and Research Department, Asian Development Bank. He headed ERD’s Knowledge Dissemination Unit and was Managing Editor of Asian Development Review.
Fresh from the San Carlos Major Seminary, where he finished AB-Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude), he started as an Instructor at the University of San Carlos; he pursued his dream of becoming an economist by finishing AB-Economics at USC. He was awarded a Graduate Assistantship grant that same year at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, where he graduated with an MA-Economics degree in. He won another Fellowship grant from Ford Foundation and took his Doctorate in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. It is in consultancy and research that Dr. Pernia has a few peers which are the World Bank, Population Council East and South Asia Regional Office, United Nations University, Population Center Foundation, Commission on Population, United Nations Centre for Regional Development, World Bank-Ministry of Education Project on Educational Technology, Food and Agriculture Organization, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, Council for Asian Manpower Studies, and USAID-National Statistics Office Research Project on National Demographics and Health Survey.
The books he wrote and published are outstanding achievements. His journal articles, chapters in choice books, and papers on brain drain, urbanization, population, nutrition, migration, research, fertility, demography, food policy, employment, human resource, education, labor, environment, poverty, sanitation, financial crisis, growth, inequality, infrastructure, trade, investment, agricultural productivity, and various other subjects with economic and social implications, number more than a hundred.
