Self-rated quality of life improves again after pandemic slump

Inquirer file photo

MANILA, Philippines — Three out of 10 adult Filipinos say that their quality of life was better than 12 months before, the results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey released on Friday showed.

The survey, taken from March 21 to 25, found that 30 percent of Filipinos, whom SWS termed as “gainers,” said that their quality of life improved from what it was a year ago, while 25 percent said it got worse, termed “losers.”

On the other hand, 45 percent said that their quality of life was unchanged.

READ: SWS: 45% of Filipinos believe quality of life stayed the same

According to the survey, the net gainers score was classified as “high” with +5, which was the same in December 2023. This was seven points higher than the “fair” -2 net score in September 2023, and six points below the “very high” +11 net score in June 2023.

The stable nationwide net gainers score from December 2023 to March 2024 was due to an increase in Luzon outside of Metro Manila combined with declines in Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao.

The survey showed that compared to December 2023, net gainers score in Luzon outside of Metro Manila increased by eight points from +6 to +14, showing an improvement from “high” to “very high.”

Net gainer score, however, fell from “very high” to “high” in Metro Manila, down by seven points from +16 to +9; “high” to “fair”. It also fell in Visayas, from +4 to -2, down by six points and in Mindanao from -3 to -8, down by five points.

Despite GNP growth

The survey used face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adult respondents all over the country with a sampling margin error of plus-or-minus 2.5 percent for national percentages.

SWS has been surveying people’s self-assessment of changes in their quality of life over a 12-month period since April 1983 with more than 152 field surveys.

SWS president Mahar Mangahas said in his Inquirer opinion column on June 15 that 126 of those 152 surveys showed more losers than gainers, and only 26 showed more gainers than losers, in 41 years.

Mangahas used the data to show the failure of “trickle-down economics” in the Philippine context despite the growth in real gross national product (GNP) per capita in four decades.

According to the SWS, the net gainer score was generally negative until 2015, when it rose to positive numbers. It again sharply declined in the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns. It has since trended back upwards but has not fully returned to prepandemic levels. —Inquirer Research