Damned lies and statistics

THE recent double full-page “Ganito tayo noon, Ganito tayo ngayon” ads trumpeting the supposed achievements of President Macapagal-Arroyo bring to mind the quote attributed to 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

There are at least four ways to lie—or at the very least mislead—with statistics: (1) Use them selectively, (2) Manufacture your own, (3) Paint them in the wrong light, or (4) Claim undue credit for them. And all four appear to be manifested in the array of dazzling figures laid out by the Palace spin masters in their full page spreads to have us believe that we should all be eternally grateful to the current president.

Selective statistics

The most common trick is to use and present statistics selectively. There are a number of ways of doing this. One is to ignore duration in the presentation of certain data. An item that people readily saw through is the assertion that the 294,995 housing units provided under Arroyo’s watch exceeds Ramos’ 203,891 and Estrada’s 98,265. But this conveniently ignores that Arroyo had nine years to do it against Ramos’ six and Estrada’s two and a half years. On an average per year basis, Arroyo actually had the lowest performance at 32,777 units, against Ramos’ 33,981 and Estrada’s 39,306.

Another trick is to omit bad years in reckoning averages, to be able to project a more positive picture than otherwise. An item that met with wide reaction is the claim that the highest average annual rate of economic growth was attained under Arroyo (4.86 percent against Aquino’s 3.3, Ramos’ 3.6, and Estrada’s 4.7 percent). But the same ad admits that the 2009 data were not included in the averaging; doing so would bring her average down to 4.4 percent, thus lower than Estrada’s.

But others have pointed out that the comparisons are not even appropriate in the first place, as the averages for each president are taken over very different durations, like the housing data above. And I will no longer dwell on the even more fundamental questions raised by economists and international institutions on the reliability of Arroyo’s GDP numbers, given unprecedented inconsistencies with other traditionally correlated economic data.

Omitting what matters

Another way to engage in selective statistics is to deliberately omit mention of key indicators where the numbers are bad. Conspicuously absent from Arroyo’s report card is any mention of official poverty and household income statistics, and understandably so: The picture the numbers give is not pretty. Since 2003, the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line had risen from 30 percent (24.4 percent of families) to 33 percent (26.9 percent of families) in 2006. Average real household income also fell 3 percent in the same period. And more forthright voices in the government now concede that the numbers have probably worsened further since then.

This is of course a very crucial omission, as one could well argue that this is the one economic statistic that matters the most to Filipinos at large. No amount of economic growth or slowing inflation could truly matter if they fail to uplift the lives and reduce the numbers of the poor in our midst. And this is the single biggest black eye in the Arroyo presidency. Interestingly, the presidency of Joseph Estrada, who proclaimed himself “Erap para sa mahirap,” actually saw a similar rise in poverty reported by official data. Poverty under his watch actually rose from 33 percent (in 1997) to 34 percent of Filipinos (in 2000), translating to about 2.5 million additional Filipinos descending into poverty—a direct blow in the face of his claims of being champion of the poor.

Dubious numbers

But closer to an outright lie is the claim that 14.2 million jobs were created during Arroyo’s presidency. One only need check the official jobs data from the National Statistics Office, which conducts a quarterly Labor Force Survey (LFS). The LFS reported 27.8 million employed workers in October 2000, and 35.5 million in October 2009. Straightforward arithmetic tells me that only 7.7 million additional jobs came about during Arroyo’s watch, then. I thus cannot see how the number cited could be almost twice as large. In all likelihood, the Palace had simply added up all the self-reported (and in many cases dubiously estimated) figures reported by different government agencies wishing to impress the President that their various job generation projects succeeded—forgetting that there are official government data against which all of these could be checked. And it seems that much of the other data cited in the ads are of the same self-reported nature originating from agencies out to prove their worth.

An example of painting statistics in the wrong light is reporting rapid growth in OFW deployment as a positive accomplishment, when what it really means is that more and more Filipinos are being driven to leave their families to seek their fortunes abroad, for lack of opportunities here at home.

Finally, just one among many examples of claiming undue credit is the proud report that there were only four labor strikes in 2009, versus 60 in 2000. With the economy in near-recession in 2009, this is like claiming credit for the peace and quiet in the graveyard. –Cielito Habito, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Comments welcome at chabito@ateneo.edu