SWS survey says almost half of Filipino families still feel they’re poor

(FILE PHOTO) A member of this marginalized family living under a bridge in Manila takes a bath using a bucket and dipper. The Social Weather Stations says half of Filipino families it has surveyed says they still consider themselves poor, while 1.8 Filipino families claim they are newly poor, meaning they are not poor one to four years ago. AFP PHOTO /NOEL CELIS

MANILA, Philippines — Almost half of the Filipino families still find themselves poor, with an estimated 1.8 million families saying they are “newly poor,” the latest survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed.

The survey conducted in June showed that 48 percent of Filipino families rate themselves as poor, 29 percent say they are borderline poor, and 23 percent say they are not poor. The results of the survey were released on Sunday.

The SWS noted that the figures are similar to its findings in May this year when 49 percent of surveyed families said they felt poor, 33 percent said they are borderline poor, and 17 percent said they don’t feel poor.

According to SWS, the total percentage of self-rated poor families is composed of seven percent who are “newly poor” or those who were not poor one to four years ago, 4.1 percent who are “usually poor” or those who were not poor five or more years ago, and 36.2 percent who were “always poor.”

“Of the estimated 12 million poor families in June 2021, 1.8 million were newly poor, 1 million were usually poor, and 9.1 million were always poor,” the polling body stated.

The number of self-rated poor was highest in the Visayas where 70 percent of surveyed families rated themselves as poor, 24 percent said they are borderline poor, and 7 percent said they are not poor.

“It is only in the Visayas where families feeling poor rose [from 56 percent in May to 70 percent in June], along with a decline in borderline poor,” the SWS added.

Following the Visayas is Mindanao where 51 percent said they are poor, 42 percent said they are borderline poor, and seven percent said they are not poor.

In Metro Manila, 43 percent of families said they are poor, 19 percent are borderline poor, and 38 percent are not poor. In Luzon excluding Metro Manila, 38 percent see themselves as poor, 28 percent as borderline poor, and 34 percent as not poor.

Meanwhile, on self-rated food poverty (SRFP), the June survey also found that 32 percent of families rate themselves as “food-poor,” 38 percent say they are “borderline food-poor,” and 29 percent say they are “not food-poor.”

The SWS likewise reported that the national median self-rated poverty threshold (SRP threshold) rose to P15,000 in June from P13,000 in May 2021, while the median SRP gap rose to P6,000 from P5,000.

The SRP threshold is the minimum monthly budget that self-rated poor families say they need in order not to consider themselves as poor, while SRP gap is the amount that poor families say they lack in their minimum monthly budgets.

SWS said the survey was conducted from June 23 to 26 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults nationwide, composed of 300 each in Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The sampling error margins are ±3 percent for national percentages and ±6 percent for Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

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JPV