SWS: Record-low 50% of adult Filipinos expect happy Christmas

MANILA, Philippines — Only 50 percent of adult Filipinos are expecting to have a happy Christmas this year, according to survey results released by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) on Thursday.

According to SWS, 15 percent of adult Filipinos expect a sad Christmas, while 33 percent are expecting it to be neither happy nor sad.

SWS said the 50 percent of Filipinos expecting a happy Christmas is 12 points below the previous record-low of 62 percent in 2013, 2006, and 2005.

According to the poll body, the expectation of a happy Christmas was a record-high 82 percent when SWS surveyed it for the first time in 2002.

It then went down to 77 percent in 2003 before ranging from 62 to 69 percent from 2004 to 2013. The percentage improved from 71 percent in 2014 to 79 percent in 2019.

READ: Percentage of Filipinos expecting ‘happy’ Christmas highest since 2002

“On the other hand, a new record-high 15% expect a sad Christmas, surpassing the previous high of 11% in 2011,” SWS also said.

Meanwhile, the 33 percent expecting Christmas to be neither happy nor sad is also a new record-high that surpassed the previous record of 29 percent in 2006.

According to SWS, the percentage of those who expect a sad Christmas this year is higher among poor families at 18 percent, than among “borderline poor” at 13 percent, and “not poor” families at 12 percent.

On the other hand, the expectation of a sad Christmas is higher among families that experienced involuntary hunger in the past three months (22 percent) than among families that did not experience hunger (14 percent).

READ: Almost half of Filipino families feel they are poor, latest SWS survey says

SWS further said that the percentage of those who expect a sad Christmas is much higher among severely hungry families (35 percent) than among moderately hungry families (19 percent).

“In 2020, those expecting a happy Christmas are still majorities in Mindanao (65%) and Visayas (57%), but fell to only minorities in Balance Luzon (42%) and Metro Manila (36%),” the poll body also noted.

According to SWS, the survey was conducted from November 21 to 25 and is the first to be done through face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults, or those aged 18 years old and above, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

SWS said the respondents are composed of 600 in Balance Luzon and 300 each in Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao. The sampling error margins are ±2.5 percent for national percentages, ±4 percent for Balance Luzon, and ±6 percent for Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao.

JE