Social Climate : Aren’t 50 hunger surveys enough?

HOW MANY surveys are needed before the gravity of the Philippine hunger problem is recognized by the government and other institutions, domestic and international, professing concern for the economic well-being of the people?

Last Wednesday’s Social Weather Stations report that 21.1 percent of Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger in the three months prior to being surveyed on June 25-28, 2010 was the 50th in a continuous series of SWS surveys of hunger that started 12 years ago.

The SWS national surveys of households were done twice a year in 1986-1991, and then four times a year from 1992 to the present. In July 1998, stimulated by numerous newspaper accounts of hunger prevalent in Mindanao, SWS tried out asking household heads in its quarterly sample: “In the past three months, has your family even once experienced hunger in the past three months, without having anything to eat?” Those who answered yes were then asked: “Did it happen only once, a few times, often, or always?”

The July 1998 SWS survey (the first in the Estrada period) found 8.9 percent of families declaring that they had suffered from hunger involuntarily. There were 5.7 percent who said it happened once or a few times—which we termed “moderate hunger”—and 3.2 percent who said it happened often or always—which we termed “severe hunger.”

Such numbers, if describing unemployment, would cause much concern. Yet they pertained to hunger, a much more painful situation! SWS decided to keep asking the hunger questions in its next surveys, not realizing that it would discover hunger growing more serious. Hunger has been a core Social Weather indicator ever since.

Hunger rose to 9.7 percent in the next SWS survey, in September 1998, and then to 14.5 percent in November 1998. The simple average hunger rate of the three 1998 surveys was 11.0 percent. By how much would it have to fall thereafter in order to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the hunger rate between 1990 and 2015?

The hunger-MDG. Halving a hunger rate means reducing it by .50 of whatever it was originally. Steady reduction over 25 years means reducing hunger each year by an average of .02 of what it was in 1990. After the eight-year period 1990-1998, hunger should already have been reduced by .16 of hunger in 1990. Average hunger in 1998, assuming it followed the MDG trend line, should have been 1.00 – .16 = .84 of hunger in 1990. So let us assume that hunger in 1990 was equal to 11.0 percent of families divided by .84, or 13.1 percent of families; half of this, or the hunger-MDG by 2015, would be 6.55 percent of families.

The quarterly SWS surveys show: (a) that hunger is volatile, and (b) that the hunger-MDG was achievable in the late 1990s and early 2000s, not afterward.

During 1999, hunger had a low point of 6.5 percent in October, but averaged 8.7 percent for the year. In 2000, hunger ranged between 8.8 and 12.7 percent, and averaged 10.8 percent.

In 2001, the hunger percentage peaked at 16.1 in March (the first survey of the Arroyo period), but fell quickly afterward, and averaged only 11.4. In 2002, it ranged between 8.8 and 11.5, and averaged 10.1.

The best-ever year was 2003, with single-digit hunger percentages in all quarters: 6.7, 6.6, the record-low 5.1, and 9.4; the average was 7.0. If the 2003 situation had continued, the hunger-MDG would have been achieved.

However, in 27 surveys from March 2004 to the present, the hunger percentage has always been over 10. In 21 surveys from August 2005 to the present, it has always been over 15, with only two exceptions.

In September 2007, the hunger percentage was 21.5, breaching 20 for the first time. In 13 surveys from then to the present, it reached 20+ six times, including the last three consecutive surveys, hitting the record high of 24.0 in December 2009.

The new June 2010 hunger rate of 21.1 percent amounts to an estimated 4 million families. Of these, 800,000 suffered hunger severely, and 3.2 million suffered it moderately. This is the starting point of the P-Noy administration.

These numbers are not mere opinions or perceptions. Survey respondents report their hardships reliably. They have nothing to fear by telling the truth, and nothing to gain by telling lies. They tell SWS interviewers the truth about their own hunger, as they tell the truth about their own votes. Similarly, they tell National Statistics Office interviewers the truth about their employment and underemployment. Doubters should verify the numbers by conducting their own surveys.

What next? I pray that future state of the nation addresses will no longer trumpet about GDP or GNP, since Philippine macroeconomic growth has been impotent against hunger. The only macro-variables found, so far, to affect hunger by UP professor of statistics and economics Dennis Mapa, who has done time-series analysis of the SWS hunger data, are food-price inflation and underemployment. Thus hunger must be fought directly. The trickle-down idea is no better than wishful thinking.

For the very promising Conditional Cash Transfer program, one can see that a mechanism for scientific monitoring and evaluation is being put in place. There is reason to expect the corresponding reports to be made public.

On the other hand, for all the billions of pesos that the National Food Authority spent—off-budget at that—to import rice, it seems to have made no efforts to monitor the effects of its massive importations. As far as 50 SWS surveys can tell, most people reached by NFA rice weren’t the hungry.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.