INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Social Welfare and Development considered the series of calamities that hit the country as among the factors why many Filipinos rated themselves poor.
This was the reaction of Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman on the recent SWS Survey showing more Filipinos regarded themselves as poor.
Despite the conditional cash transfer (CCT), there is a slight increase of Filipinos who claimed or considered themselves as poor.
“50 to 55 percent said they are poor so this is a great challenge for us to look into ways on things we still need to do particularly on Yolanda-hit areas,” Soliman said.
The DSWD also urged the public to help the agency in formulating an effective program to help eradicate poverty in the country.
“We welcome proposals and suggestions on how we can improve the system. We can never have a perfect system,” Soliman said.
An estimated 11.8 million Filipino families rated themselves as poor, while some 8.8 million families said they were “food-poor,” a recent survey by SWS found.
The survey was conducted from Dec. 11 to 16 nationwide and the results were first published in the BusinessWorld newspaper.
SWS found 55 percent of the respondents saying that they were poor, up from 50 percent, or 10.8 million families, three months earlier.
It also found that 41 percent of the households considered themselves food-poor, up from 37 percent, or 7.9 million, in September. The poverty threshold is the monthly budget that households need in order not to consider themselves poor.
The full-year self-rated poverty averaged 52 percent last year, unchanged from 2012, while the full-year self-rated food poverty average declined to 39 percent from 41 percent.
Self-rated poverty increased across areas, except in Mindanao where it stood at 59 percent, down from 61 percent in the previous quarter. The full-year average was 55 percent, lower than the 67 percent in 2012.
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