Self-rated poverty down in 1st quarter

Self-rated poverty slightly went down in the first quarter of the year with 53 percent (11.5 million Filipino families) rating themselves as “poor,” from 55 percent (11.8 million families) in December 2013, the latest Social Weather Stations survey showed. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Self-rated poverty slightly went down in the first quarter of the year with 53 percent (11.5 million Filipino families) rating themselves as “poor,” from 55 percent (11.8 million families) in December 2013, the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed.

The survey, conducted from March 27 to 30 and first published in the BusinessWorld newspaper, also found that 39 percent (8.5 million families) said they were “food-poor,” from 41 percent (8.8 million families) in December.

The SWS attributed the decline of the ratings for both self-rated poverty and food poverty to improvements in Metro Manila, the Visayas and Mindanao.

The median self-rated poverty threshold increased from P12,000 to P15,000 in Metro Manila and from P8,000 to P10,000 in the rest of Luzon, while it remained unchanged at P10,000 both in the Visayas and Mindanao.

The self-rated poverty threshold is the monthly budget that households need in order not to consider themselves poor, the SWS said.

The survey, which used face-to-face interviews with 1,200 Filipinos, has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.—Rafael L. Antonio, Inquirer Research