PSA: PH poverty hit lowest, single-digit level in 2025
The Philippines recorded its lowest poverty incidence on record at 9.7 percent in 2025, bringing the share of Filipinos living below the official poverty threshold into single-digit territory for the first time in history, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The historic rate, however, may not tell the whole story, with an economist saying it does not reflect current economic conditions and that the poverty threshold used by the PSA remains too low to reflect the actual cost of meeting basic needs.
Latest data from the PSA showed that the poverty incidence rate fell to 9.7 percent in 2025, equivalent to 11.08 million Filipinos living below the poverty threshold, down from 15.5 percent, or 17.5 million in 2023.
This meant that 6.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty during the period. It also puts the government three years ahead of its target under the Philippine Development Plan (PDP), which aims to bring poverty incidence down to between 8.8 percent and 9 percent by the end of the Marcos administration.
“For the first time, fewer than one in ten Filipinos is living below the poverty line,” Secretary Arsenio Balisacan of the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev) said in a statement on Friday.
“Reaching this milestone ahead of schedule demonstrates that expanding economic opportunities, complemented by effective social protection, can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives,” he added.
The latest government figure matches Social Weather Stations’ second quarter 2026 survey that also showed a decline in the number of Filipino families who consider themselves poor.
At the family level, the PSA recorded the poverty incidence at 6.4 percent, equivalent to 1.9 million poor Filipino families.
State statisticians attributed the decline in poverty incidence to changes in the poverty threshold and income from 2023 to 2025.
The annual per capita poverty threshold was set at P35,121, up by 5.5 percent from P33,296 in 2023.
Mean annual per capita income, meanwhile, grew at a faster rate of 22 percent to P104,072 from P85,291. This growth was well above the cumulative inflation rate of 5 percent over the same period.
Other economic conditions
Other economic indicators also supported the decline in poverty, with economic growth averaging 5.1 percent in 2024 and 2025, while inflation averaged 2.5 percent and unemployment 4 percent.
But Leonardo Lanzona, an economist at the Ateneo de Manila University, said the 5.5-percent increase in the threshold was small and barely kept pace with price increases.
“The issue [is] that PSA’s own chief statistician already admitted, back in 2024, that the food budget behind this threshold was too low to meet basic nutrition. PSA promised to fix it—but as of late 2025, that fix was still awaiting approval and hadn’t been applied yet,” he said.
”The 5.5-percent increase we’re seeing is consistent with the old, admittedly-too-low threshold, not the corrected one,” Lanzona added.
Should the threshold be updated, he said the measured poverty rate could “look meaningfully worse overnight.”
Lanzona also noted that the 2025 poverty figures do not yet reflect conditions, such as the persistently high inflation and slower economic growth.
Challenges
“In other words, the poverty rate looks good right now for two reasons that have nothing to do with today’s economy: it reflects last year’s conditions, and it’s measured against a bar that was already considered too low even before this year’s price shocks even started,” he said.
The Philippines has been grappling with an energy shock in 2026 amid the Middle East conflict, pushing inflation persistently above the central bank’s 3-percent target since March. Economic growth, meanwhile, slowed to 2.3 percent in the second quarter.
In an April report, the Philippine Institute of Development Studies said up to 3.1 million Filipinos could be at risk of slipping below the poverty line under more severe energy shock scenarios.
The World Bank earlier said 2 million Filipinos could fall into poverty assuming no government interventions. The multilateral lender also projected a 12.3-percent poverty rate by 2028, noting that 28 percent of Filipinos remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty.
Balisacan acknowledged this challenge, saying the pace of poverty reduction is likely to moderate in the years ahead.
“Current developments may slow the pace of poverty reduction, but early indications do not point to a reversal of the gains we have achieved,” he said.
“As we enter the final years of the administration, our priority is to ensure that families who have moved out of poverty do not fall back into it. Sustaining these gains will require a swift recovery in economic growth; continued efforts to increase investment, productivity, and job creation; upskilling and reskilling for emerging sectors; and timely support for businesses and workers affected by economic and climate-related disruptions,” Balisacan added.
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