SWS poll: 46% of Filipino families consider themselves poor

Forty-six percent, or nearly half of Filipino families, considered themselves poor, while 33% felt that they were food-poor, the results of a non-commissioned survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) for the first quarter of the year showed.

The survey, which was conducted from March 21–25, revealed that 30% of Filipino families rated themselves on the borderline dividing poor and not poor, and the remaining 23% said they were not poor.

The results hardly changed from the December 2023 survey, which found that 47% of Filipinos rated themselves poor, 33% were borderline, and 20% were not poor.

“The estimated numbers of self-rated poor families were 12.9 million in March 2024 and 13.0 million in December 2023,” the SWS said.

The one-point decline in self-rated poor was attributed to the slight decreases in Mindanao and Metro Manila, an increase in the Visayas, and a steady score in Balance Luzon.

The percentage was highest in the Visayas at 64%, followed by Mindanao at 56%, Balance Luzon at 38%, and Metro Manila at 33%.

Meanwhile, the survey also showed that 33% of families rated themselves as food-poor, 36% were borderline, and 31% were not food-poor.

Compared to the previous survey, the number of food-poor families hardly changed from 32% in December 2023. Those on the borderline dropped from 41%, and the not-food-poor went up from 26%.

In March 2024, the percentage of self-rated food-poor families was highest in the Visayas at 46%. Next was Mindanao at 44%, Metro Manila at 28%, and Balance Luzon at 24%.

Of the estimated 12.9 million self-rated food-poor families, 1.7 million also considered themselves “newly poor,” 1.5 million were “usually poor,” and 9.7 million were “always poor.”

The SWS also revealed that in the last nine quarters, the national median self-rated poverty threshold stayed at P15,000, while the national median self-rated poverty gap fell to P5,000 in March 2024 from P7,000 in December 2023.

The national median self-rated food poverty threshold also remained at P8,000 in the past five quarters, while the national median self-rated food poverty gap was at P3,000 in the past ten quarters.

The first quarter 2024 SWS survey used face-to-face interviews with 1,500 adults nationwide. It has sampling error margins of ±2.5% for national percentages, ±4.0% for Balance Luzon, and ±5.7% each for Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao.— VBL, GMA Integrated News