4 in 10 Filipino Families Feel Poor, SWS Survey Shows

At least four in every 10 Filipino families or around 10.9 million view themselves as poor, results of a Social Weather Survey released Wednesday showed as the country charts its path to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Forty-three percent of respondent families in the April 19-27 poll rated themselves as poor, 34% rated themselves as borderline poor, and 23% rated themselves as not poor.

The SWS said the number of families who rated themselves as poor in April is slightly higher than the 10.7 million families who viewed themselves as poor in December last year.

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Of the estimated 10.9 million families who rated themselves as poor in April, 1.5 million were "newly poor", 1.1 million were "usually poor" and some 8.2 million were "always poor".

The minimum monthly budget that families said they need in order to consider themselves not poor also rose to P15,000 compared to the P12,000 in December 2021.

"This indicates that poor families have been lowering their living standards, i.e., belt-tightening," SWS said.

The average self-rated poverty gap also rose to P6,000 from the P5,000 in December 2021. This means that families lack nearly half of the minimum monthly budget they need in order to consider themselves as not poor.

SWS said it interviewed 1,440 adults or those aged 18 and above for the survey which has a ±2.6% sampling error margin for national percentages and ±5.2% for Balance Luzon, Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao.

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