SWS: 45% of Pinoys optimistic about year ahead

People roam around a big shopping mall in Quezon City on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021. .(INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO / KATHERINE G. ANDRANEDA)

MANILA, Philippines — More Filipinos are now optimistic about the year ahead — the highest optimism recorded since the global pandemic began — results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey show.

Conducted from Dec. 12 to Dec. 16 through in-person interviews of 1,440 adult Filipinos, the SWS survey found that 45 percent of adult Filipinos believe their quality of life will improve in the next 12 months (optimists).

Meanwhile, 3 percent said their quality of life would worsen (pessimists), 42 percent said it would stay the same and the remaining 9 percent did not give an answer.

These resulted in a net personal optimism score of “excellent” +42 (optimists minus pessimists), up by 16 points from the “high” +26 in September 2021 and the highest since the prepandemic level of “excellent” +44 in December 2019.

Optimism rose in all areas from September to December, from +24 to +47 in Metro Manila, +28 to +48 in Luzon outside Metro Manila, +30 to +46 in Mindanao and +18 to +20 in the Visayas.

By educational attainment, net personal optimism was highest among college graduates at +55, followed by junior high school graduates at +46, elementary graduates at +35 and non-elementary graduates at +29.

Optimism, like all surveys from 2019 to 2021, was higher among “gainers” or those who said their life got better in the past year (“excellent” +58) than among “losers” or those whose quality of life got worse (“very high” +39) and those who said their lives were unchanged “very high” +36).

The survey had a sampling margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.6 percent for national percentages and plus-or-minus 5.2 percent for Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao and Luzon outside Metro Manila.

—ARIANNE SUAREZ, INQUIRER RESEARCH

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