More Filipinos say they’ve been hungry

MANILA, Philippines – A record 4.8 million families in the country said they experienced hunger in the first quarter of the year, or an increase of some 300,000 families from the previous quarter, according to the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey.

The survey, conducted from March 10 to 13, and first published in the Business World newspaper, showed that 23.8 percent of households experienced involuntary hunger, 1.3 percentage points higher than the 22.5 percent recorded in December last year.

The incidence of hunger in the two quarters are statistically identical given the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The latest figure, however, surpassed the 23.7 percent hunger rating recorded in December 2008, SWS said.

According to SWS, the latest survey of hunger, or the involuntary suffering because of the lack of anything to eat, reflected slight increases in “moderate” as well as “severe hunger.”

Those who experienced hunger “only once” or “a few times,” including the few who did not state their frequency of hunger, were categorized under moderate hunger. Severe hunger, meanwhile, refers to those who experienced hunger “often” or “always.”

Those who said they experienced “moderate hunger” increased from 17.7 percent (around 3.6 million families) in the previous quarter to 18 percent (around 3.7 million families).

Meanwhile, those who experienced “severe hunger” rose from 4.7 percent (around 955,000 families) to 5.8 percent (around 1.2 million families), just below the record 6 percent that was posted in March 2001.

The latest hunger survey follows the SWS’s release last week of a self-rated poverty survey where 55 percent of respondents—equivalent to 11.1 million families—claimed to be poor in the first quarter of 2012, a 10-point jump and the highest result so far for the Aquino administration.

Among households that considered themselves poor, those who said they went hungry, went down from 33.6 percent in December last year to 32.4 percent in March. Hunger among families who considered themselves food-poor went down, from 38.1 percent to 37.3 percent.

Moderate hunger declined among the self-rated poor (from 25.6 percent to 23.2 percent) and the self-rated food-poor families (from 29 percent to 26.8 percent).

On the other hand, severe hunger rose among the self-rated poor (from 8 percent to 9.2 percent) and the self-rated food-poor families (from 9.1 percent to 10.5 percent).

By location, incidence of hunger increased the most in Mindanao (from 19.7 percent in December last year to 26.7 percent in March). Inquirer Research