The Social Weather Stations (SWS) found in its latest survey released on Wednesday, October 23, that the proportion of Filipino families who experienced “involuntary hunger” dipped in the past three months.
In the Third Quarter 2019 Social Weather Survey, only 9.1 percent or around 2.3 million families have felt “involuntary hunger,” or experienced hunger due to lack of food to eat.
The pollster said the latest figure is a “recovery from the 10.0% (est. 2.5 million) in June 2019, following an increase from the 9.5% (est. 2.3 million families) in March.”
It pointed out that the 9.1 percent national quarterly hunger rate recorded in September is the sum of 7.4 percent or around 1.8 million families who experience “moderate hunger” and 1.7 percent or an estimated 426,000 families who experienced “severe hunger.”
The SWS said “moderate hunger” refers to the families who experienced hunger “only once” or “a few times” in the last three months, while “severe hunger” refers to those who “often” or “always” feel hungry in the same period.
Comparing the latest figures to June 2019 figures, moderate hunger went down from 8.
7 percent or 2.1 million families, while severe hunger went up from 1.3 percent or 320,000 families.
According to the survey, hunger rates dropped to 14 percent and 15.8 percent among self-rated poor and self-rated food poor families, respectively.
Self-rated poor families are those who considered themselves as poor, while self-rated food poor families are those who rate the food they eat as poor.
In its survey released on Monday, the SWS found that there were fewer Filipino families who considered themselves poor and food poor.
[READ: SWS found out fewer Filipinos consider themselves ‘poor’ in Q3 this year]
The pollster said the national hunger rate declined because of decreases in the incidence of hunger in Metro Manila and Balance Luzon, a steady figure in Visayas, and an increase in Mindanao.
Total hunger went down in Metro Manila went down from 15.
7 percent in June to 8.3 percent in September, while it fell from 9.3 percent in June to 8.1 percent in September in Balance Luzon.
Total hunger in Visayas remained at 8.
7 percent, but it rose from nine percent in June to 11.9 percent in September in Mindanao.
The survey was done from September 27 to 30 using face-to-face interviews of 1,800 adults aged 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.