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SWS found out fewer Filipinos consider themselves ‘poor’ in Q3 this year
The pollster found that 42 percent or around 10.3 million families considered themselves poor, lower than the 45 percent or 11 million families in June 2019.
(File photo: Frisno Boström/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The latest survey of Social Weather Stations (SWS) released on Monday, October 22, showed that fewer Filipinos considered themselves “poor.”
The pollster found that 42 percent or around 10.3 million families considered themselves poor, lower than the 45 percent or 11 million families in June 2019.
In the Third Quarter 2019 Social Weather Survey, the proportion of self-rated poor (SRP) families declined in all areas except Visayas. It fell by six points in Metro Manila and Balance Luzon respectively, and three points in Mindanao, however, it rose by four points in Visayas.
As of September 2019, the SWS said poor families need an average of P10,000 monthly budget for them not to consider themselves poor. It is lower than the P15,000 recorded in June 2019.
This amount is what the SWS called the “median SRP threshold” or “what the poorer half of the poor need for home expenses in order not be poor.”
Survey respondents were also asked how much they “lack” in their minimum monthly budgets relative to their SRP threshold. To this, they said they need P5,000 a month, half of the SRP threshold.
This figure, meanwhile, is called as the “SRP Gap” or “how much the poorer half of the poor ‘lack’ in reaching their stated threshold in order not to consider themselves poor.”
Food Poor
The survey also showed that 29 percent or 7.1 families are “food poor” or those who rate their food as poor.
This is a six-point decline from the 35 percent or 8.5 million in June, according to the pollster.
The number of self-rated food poor (SFRP) declined in all areas except Visayas. It fell by 11 points in Mindanao, six points in Metro Manila and Balance Luzon respectively, but rose by three points in Visayas.
As of September 2019, the SWS said the SRFP families need P5,000 monthly food budget for them not consider their food as poor.
This amount is the “median SFRP threshold” which refers to what the “poorer half of the poor need in order to not consider their food as poor.”
The latest figure is lower than the P6,000 recorded in June.
The SFRP families also said they lack P3,000 for their food budget, which is more than half of the median SRFP threshold.
The survey was conducted from September 27 to 30 this year using face-to-face interviews of 1,800 respondents who are 18 years old and above. It has sampling error margins of plus-minus 2.3 percent for national percentages, plus-minus four percent each for Balance Luzon and Mindanao, and plus-minus six percent each for Metro Manila and Visayas.
