SWS: 45% of Pinoys consider themselves poor

FILE: Grandparents and their Grandchildren share an afternoon outside their family run business sharing information on their social media devices (Photo: Wayne S. Grazio/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The number of Filipino families who considered themselves as “mahirap” or poor has climbed to 45 percent or an estimated 11.1 million, the Second Quarter 2019 Social Weather Survey released on Saturday, July 20, showed.

The latest survey said this increased to seven percentage points from the record-low 38 percent or at least 9.5 million families in March 2019.

This rise, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) noted, came after a 14-point decline over the previous three quarters. From 52 percent recorded in September 2018 it went down to 50 percent in December, and to 38 percent in March 2019.

The pollster said the seven-point increase in the number of self-rated poor (SRP) families was due to increases of 19 points Mindanao, five points in Balance Luzon, and three points in Metro Manila. Meanwhile, it was a steady proportion in Visayas with 55 percent.

The same survey also revealed that those families who rate their food as “mahirap (poor),” or what the SWS called as “Food Poor,” also went up to 35 percent or an estimated 8.5 million families. This is eight points above the record-low 27 percent or at least 6.8 million families in March 2019.

Same with the SRP percentage, the rise in the number of self-rated food poor (SRFP) families came after a nine-point decrease over the past three quarters, from 36 percent in September 2018 to 34 percent in December and to 27 percent in March 2019.

The pollster said the eight-point jump was due to increases of 20 points in Mindanao, six points in Balance Luzon, and three points in Metro Manila, combined with a three-point drop in Visayas.

The survey also showed that among the estimated 24.6 million total households in June 2019, at least three million or 12.1 percent are “newly non-poor,’ while an estimated 3.4 million families or 13.8 percent are “usually non-poor.”

“Newly non-poor” is described by the SWS as those who used to be poor one to four years ago, while described as “usually non-poor” are people who used to be poor five or more years ago.

On the other hand, 28.7 percent of respondents or 7.1 million families are “always non-poor” or those who have never considered themselves as poor.

The latest survey was done from June 22 to 26 using face-to-face interviews with its 1,200 respondents nationwide. It has sampling error margins of plus or minus three percent for national percentages and plus or minus six percent for Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

The pollster said the area estimated were weighted by Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) medium-population projections for 2019 to get the national estimates.