Survey: 51% of families consider themselves poor
Many Filipino families consider themselves poor, according to a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).
The SWS said the survey of 1,200 adult respondents nationwide showed that 51 percent of Filipino families rated themselves as poor, 12 percent placed themselves between poor and not poor and 37 percent called themselves not poor. The survey results were released on Friday.
The SWS also said that among those who rated themselves as poor, 6.5 percent were considered “newly poor,” or those who were not poor one to four years ago, while 8.5 percent were “usually poor,” or those who were nonpoor five or more years ago. Meanwhile, 35.6 percent said they were “always poor,” or had never experienced being nonpoor.
The SWS noted that the proportion of self-rated poor families rose by 1 percentage point from the September 2025 Self-Rated Poverty survey.
The SWS also said that self-rated poor families were highest in Mindanao at 65 percent, followed by the Visayas at 58 percent, Balance Luzon at 45 percent and Metro Manila at 37 percent.
‘Not poor’
Meanwhile, those who considered themselves not poor rose from 51 percent to 56 percent in Metro Manila and from 20 percent to 24 percent in Mindanao, but fell from 49 percent to 46 percent in Balance Luzon and from 23 percent to 21 percent in the Visayas.
On the other hand, the SWS said the national median self-rated poverty (SRP) threshold increased from P12,000 in September 2025 to P15,000 in November 2025, while the national median SRP gap rose slightly from P5,000 to P6,000.
The SWS explained that the SRP threshold is the “minimum monthly budget self-rated poor families say they need for home expenses in order not to consider themselves poor.”
The survey was conducted nationwide, with 300 respondents each from Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. It had sampling error margins of ±3 percent for national percentages and ±6 percent for each area.
