SWS: 46% of Pinoys see better life in the next 12 months

At least 46% or short of majority of adult Filipinos identified as optimists expect their quality of life to improve in the next 12 months amid the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed. 

The SWS poll, conducted last June 26 to 29 and the last to be conducted under the then administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, also found that 40% of adult Filipinos say their quality of life will stay the same while only 4%, classified by SWS as pessimist, said it will worsen.

The remaining 11% did not give an answer.

This results in net personal optimism of +42, categorized by SWS as excellent (+40 and up).

The June 2022 Net Personal Optimism score of +42, however, is three points above the +39 recorded in April 2022, a figure categorized as very high.

The +42 Net Personal Optimism score in June 2022 is also the same figure recorded in December 2021, and just 2 points below the pre-pandemic level of +44 in December 2019.

High hopes for non-hungry, severely hungry

Specifically, Net Personal Optimism is higher among non-hungry families, reaching +43 among adults who belong to families that did not experience hunger in the past three months.

Those who belong to families that experienced hunger in general posted a +35 Net Personal Optimism, higher than those who belong to families who experienced moderate hunger (+34).

Those who belong to families who experienced severe hunger, however, reached a higher +40 Net Personal Optimism.

A June 2022 SWS poll found that 11.6% of Filipino families, or an estimated 2.9 million, experienced involuntary hunger – being hungry and not having anything to eat – at least once in the past three months. 

Since April 1984, the survey question on respondents’ prediction of their quality-of-life change over the next 12 months has been fielded 145 times since April 1984, the SWS said.

"Out of the 145 surveys, the Net Personal Optimism score was negative only 11 times, reaching a historic low of -19 in May 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. It has since trended back upwards but still has not reached pre-pandemic levels," it added.

The June 26 to 29, 2022 survey question on the respondents’ prediction of their quality-of-life change over the next 12 months was conducted using face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults (18 years old and above) nationwide broken down to 300 each in Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao, and 600 in Balance Luzon.

"Face-to-face is the standard interviewing method for Social Weather Stations; the only exceptions were early in the pandemic when movement restrictions made face-to-face impossible and mobile phone interviews were conducted," the SWS said.

"Normal face-to-face field operations resumed in November 2020," it added.

The same June SWS survey's sampling error margins are ±2.5% for national percentages, ±5.7% each for Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao, and ±4.0% for Balance Luzon.

"The area estimates were weighted by the Philippine Statistics Authority medium-population projections for 2022 to obtain the national estimates," the SWS said. —KG, GMA News