Fighting poverty, blindfolded

THERE WAS BOTH BAD NEWS AND GOOD news at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport last week. The bad news was that the airport’s night-time navigational instruments broke down. The good news was that the authorities had the common sense to cancel the affected flights, rather than compel them to operate blindfolded.

I only wish that the government’s programs against poverty and hunger also had the common sense to see the need for adequate navigational instruments. With official statistics so few that they can be counted on one’s fingers, it’s no wonder such programs cannot move forward.

Poverty is officially reported only once in three years. Poverty measurement is the work of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), using the triennial Family Income and Expenditure Surveys (FIES) done by the National Statistics Office.

The current FIES requires interviewing with a 72-page questionnaire, taking four hours. For the 2009 round, respondents were asked in July 2009 about their income and expenditures during the first half of 2009, and were then visited again in January 2010 and asked about the second half of 2009. (Unsurprisingly, many respondents refuse the second visit. Double-visiting doubles the data-gathering cost; and yet I’ve never seen an FIES report that separates the first and second halves of a year.)

The current FIES uses a mammoth sample of 51,000 households, large enough to produce accurate provincial statistics. (Yet, by using a sample one-third as large (i.e., 17,000), an FIES would produce accurate regional statistics, and be affordable annually. I recommend that the government gain the capacity to monitor regional poverty every year, by abandoning its present practice of monitoring provincial poverty every three years.)

As of now, there are official figures on poverty only for 1988, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2006, i.e. two readings each for the Cory and Ramos periods, one for the Estrada period, and two for the Arroyo period.

Since it takes two years to complete an official poverty report, only the one done in 1988 could have been seen by Cory Aquino. The 1991 and 1994 reports were available to FVR, but only the latter pertained to his period. The 1997 report available to Erap referred to FVR’s period. Because GMA’s period was so long, she should have seen the 2000 report, pertaining to Erap’s period, plus the 2003 and 2006 reports pertaining to her watch specifically.

On March 5, 2008, the NSCB issued its 2006 report, “Poverty worsens between 2003 and 2006,” saying that families in poverty rose from 24.4 percent to 26.9 percent nationwide, and that their number rose from 4.0 million to 4.7 million, during the period.

The official report on 2009 poverty, which will probably be ready for P-Noy next March 2011, will pertain only to GMA’s watch. The official report on 2012 poverty, due in March 2014, will enable comparison of 2012 with 2009, i.e. half-GMA, half-P-Noy. Official analysis of P-Noy’s own anti-poverty programs will be possible only when the 2015 poverty report is ready, in March 2017, for another president to see.

With so little data on poverty to examine, P-Noy’s economists are bound to navigate instead by means of the quarterly-available Gross National Product—searching where light shines, rather than letting light shine in the proper places to search.

Hunger is officially surveyed only once in five years. The National Nutrition Survey (NNS) is the work of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI). The NNS has been done only seven times: in 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008.

Like an FIES, an NNS is very detailed. It involves anthropometry (body measurement), biochemistry, clinical examination, questions on the family’s diet, ability to acquire food, adequacy of infant feeding, participation in food and nutrition programs, and nutrition-related lifestyle, diseases, and risk factors. The FNRI acknowledges that its NNS is tedious, voluminous, and invasive.

To my knowledge, the 2008 NNS first went public on Feb. 2, 2010. My Feb. 6 column cited Dr. Jocelyn Juguan of FNRI as reporting that 16.1 percent of all mothers and 11.1 percent of all children went hungry, due to no food or no money to buy food, at least once in the three months prior to being interviewed in 2008.

Dr. Juguan further reported that the percentage of underweight children of ages 0-5 rose from 24.6 in 2005 (I guess her 2005 data source is non-NNS) to 26.2 in 2008, and, of ages 6-10 rose from 22.8 in 2005 to 25.6 in 2008. If both poverty and hunger worsened over their last two official readings under GMA’s watch, is that “beating the odds”?

Last June 2, at a workshop on enhancing the Philippine food and nutrition surveillance system, the FNRI presented plans for the NNS, including strengthening of database management, upgrading of survey equipment and systems of data collection, and automation of post-survey activities. Indeed, these will shorten the time-lag between reference period and report completion. But they will not increase the frequency of the NNS.

The next NNS in 2013 will reflect both 2008-2010.5 under GMA’s watch, and 2010.5-2013 under P-Noy’s watch. But P-Noy will learn the result only in February 2014. The next NNS of 2018 may only be seen in February 2019, by P-Noy’s successor. Yet it is financially and technically feasible for the government to track both hunger and poverty annually, if not more often.

For its part, SWS will continue its tradition of using economical questionnaires and sample sizes to monitor poverty and hunger quarterly. The SWS surveys are not designed for mere public relations, but to help the country navigate towards meaningful and shared development. –Mahar Mangahas, Philippine Daily Inquirer

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