SWS March survey shows 4 in 10 Filipinos or 12.9M families feel poor

People cross a street at a popular shopping centre in Manila on February 4, 2022, after authorities issued relaxation of Covid-19 rules. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)

Four out of 10 Filipino families in the country considered themselves “poor” based on the results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey.

Taken from March 21 to 25, the survey indicated that 46 percent or an estimated 12.9 million Filipino families rated themselves as “poor,” 23 percent thought of themselves as “not poor,” while 30 percent considered themselves “borderline” (between “poor” and “not poor”).

The results were similar to the findings of the previous survey in December 2023 in which 47 percent or 13 million families rated themselves as “poor;” 20 percent, “not poor;” and 33 percent, “borderline.”

In Mindanao, families that felt poor decreased from 61 percent to 56 percent. In Metro Manila, it also went down from 37 percent to 33 percent.

Self-rated poverty was steady in Luzon outside of Metro Manila, declining only slightly from 39 percent to 38 percent.

On the other hand, self-rated “poor” families rose in Visayas from 58 percent in December 2023 to 64 percent in March. Food-poor rating

The latest survey also found that 33 percent rated themselves as “food-poor;” 36 percent, “food borderline;” and 31 percent, “not food-poor.”

Self-rated food poverty is based on the type of food consumed by their families, according to SWS.

The estimated number of self-rated “food-poor” families currently stands at 9.3 million.

The percentage of self-rated “food-poor” families in Visayas rose from 38 percent in December 2023 to 46 percent in the latest survey. There was also an increase in Metro Manila from 24 percent to 28 percent and in Mindanao from 43 percent to 44 percent. There was a slight decrease in Luzon outside of Metro Manila from 27 percent to 24 percent.The survey, using face-to-face interviews, asked 1,500 adult respondents where they would place their family on a card on which the words “mahirap” (poor) and “hindi mahirap” (not poor) were separated by a line.

Of the estimated 12.9 million “poor” families in March, 1.7 million were “newly poor,” 1.5 million were “usually poor” and 9.7 million were “always poor.”The survey had a sampling margin error of plus-or-minus 2.5 percent for national percentages, plus or minus 4 percent for Luzon outside of Metro Manila and plus or minus 5.7 percent each for Metro Manila, Visayas and Mindanao. —Inquirer Research INQ