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Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Number of hungry Pinoys decreases: survey
MANILA -- Lowered expectations. This is how Filipinos cope with the hunger and poverty they are suffering under the Arroyo administration.
A November 23 to December 2 survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed the number of Filipinos who went hungry and who consider themselves poor dropped slightly in the fourth quarter of 2004 because they considerably lowered their standards of living.
The survey showed the number of families who had nothing to eat at least once in the past three months declined to 11.5 percent compared to 15.1 percent in August.
It also showed that 48 percent of Filipinos claimed to be poor as against 53 percent in August.
But the Filipinos' overall self-rated poverty (SRP) threshold, or the monthly household budget needed so as not to be considered poor, plunged by half--from P10,000 per month in the previous years to only P5,000.
"Since the cost of living is actually rising, a declining poverty threshold means that households are lowering their living standards, in other words, belt-tightening," the SWS survey stated.
Filipinos now consider P10,000 as the monthly budget needed to not be considered poor in Metro Manila. The threshold reached P15,000 several times in the past years.
In Luzon and the Visayas, the poverty threshold has dropped from P10,000 to P5,000.
In Mindanao, the threshold has declined from P5,000 to P3,000. The last time when the Mindanao median was at P3,000 was in 1993.
The SWS survey showed that severe hunger, or the number of families who experienced hunger often/always in the past three months, dropped from 3.3 percent in August to 2.2 percent in December.
Moderate hunger, or having nothing to eat once/a few times in the last three months, also declined to 9.1 percent in December 2004, from 11.8 percent in August 2004.
Total hunger, the sum of severe hunger and moderate hunger, in the entire country was placed at 11.5 percent in December 2004 but it is still above the 1998-2004 average of 10 percent.
Total hunger was highest in Mindanao at 16.3 percent, followed by 13 percent in the Visayas, nine percent in Luzon, and 8.7 percent in Metro Manila.
Families with members who are below 18 years old had a hunger rate of 11.9 percent while those consisting entirely of adults had a hunger rate of 10.1 percent.
The SWS said the difference of 1.8 percent, called the child-hunger-gap, can be attributed to the fact that children are relatively less able to contribute to the family income. The average child-hunger-gap for 1998-2004 is 3.3 percent.
The SWS said its surveys in the past six years showed the gap tends to decline as the education of the household head increases.
The number of Filipinos who rated themselves as poor went down from 41 percent in August to 33 percent in Metro Manila, from 54 percent to 45 percent in Luzon, and from 59 percent to 55 percent in Mindanao. Poverty was unchanged in the Visayas at 55 percent.
Press Secretary and presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said government "will not stop until there is adequate food in every table."
"Our agricultural programs will be pushed harder with the development of two million new productive hectares for agri and aquacultures and we will make sure that products reach the market in fastest and most efficient way," he said. (JMR)
(January 19, 2005 issue)
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