Saturday, July 22, 2006
Survey shows hike in number of poor Filipino families
THE number of poor Filipino families rose to 59 percent in June 2006, from 55 percent last March, a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey noted.
The June 22 to 28 SWS survey, which had 1,200 respondents, showed that the self-rated poor households rose in Mindanao, from 56 percent in March to 61 percent in June, in Luzon from 54 percent to 59 percent, and in the Visayas from 57 percent to 59 percent.
But self-rated poverty declined in Metro Manila from 56 percent in March to 54 percent in June.
The survey also showed that the average monthly budget that poor households say they need to escape poverty rose in Metro Manila, from P10,000 in March 2006 to P15,000 in June 2006.
However, it stayed at P5,000 in Luzon and at P6,000 in Mindanao. It went down in the Visayas from P7,000 in March to P6,000 in June.
The SWS said the thresholds have already been breached in earlier years, even though the cost of living rose greatly every year. "Since the cost of living is actually rising, a declining or unchanging poverty threshold means that households are lowering their living standards, in other words, belt-tightening," it said.
But the proportion of families who went hungry, or with nothing to eat at least once in the past three months, dropped from 16.9 percent in March to 13.9 percent in June.
This amounts to 2.4 million households experiencing hunger out of a projected base of 17.4 million households in the country.
Hunger has been at double-digits since the second quarter of 2004. The average level of hunger in the 33 quarterly SWS surveys from July 1998 up to the present is 10.9 percent of households.
The SWS attributed the decline of hunger to improvements in Mindanao, where hunger fell from 21 percent in March to 17.3 percent in June. In Metro Manila, it also dropped from 18.3 percent to 15 percent, and in Luzon from 14.7 percent to 10 percent.
However, it rose slightly in the Visayas from 16 percent in March to 17.7 percent in June.
Severe Hunger, defined as households who went hungry Often or Always in the last three months, declined to 3.4 percent in June - or over 580,000 households - from 4.2 percent in March.
Moderate Hunger, or those who experienced it Only Once or A Few Times in the last three months, fell to 10.1 percent in June - about 1.8 million households - from 12.7 percent in March.
Compared to March 2006, Severe Hunger rose in Visayas and Mindanao, but fell in Metro Manila and Luzon. Moderate Hunger fell in all areas. (JMR/Sunnex)
(July 22, 2006 issue)
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