SWS: Fewer families experienced hunger

MANILA, Philippines – While fewer Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger in the last three months, nearly half of them rated themselves “mahirap” or “poor,” a recent survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed.

The SWS poll, conducted from Sept. 24 to 27, found that 15.9 percent of families (about three million families) went hungry at least once in the past three months, down from 21.1 percent in June.

Nearly half or 48 percent of households, meanwhile, rated themselves as “mahirap” or “poor,” a minor improvement from 50 percent previously.

Families who rated themselves “food-poor” remained at 39 percent or about 7.1 million families.

Results of the survey were published in the newspaper BusinessWorld yesterday.

SWS said the latest hunger figure is two points higher than the 12-year average. It said hunger has been in double-digits since June 2004.

SWS said the decline in overall hunger was due to decrease in both moderate hunger and severe hunger.

Moderate hunger, which refers to those who experience it “only once” or “a few times,” was down by four points to 12.9 percent.

Severe hunger, which refers to those who experience it “often” and “always,” went down by one point to 3.1 percent or 575,000 families.

SWS said overall hunger declined in all geographical areas, with the highest drop recorded in Mindanao.

In Mindanao, overall hunger went down to 16.3 percent (700,000 families) from 26 percent.

In the Visayas, overall hunger dropped by six points to 15.3 percent (580,000 families). In the balance of Luzon, it was down by almost four points to 14.7 percent (1.2 million families), while in Metro Manila, it dropped by nearly two points to 20.3 percent (507,000 families).

Moderate hunger likewise declined in Mindanao to 13.3 percent from 21 percent; in the Visayas to 11.7 percent from 17.3 percent; in balance Luzon to 12.3 percent from 14 percent; and in Metro Manila to 15.7 percent from 19 percent.

SWS said the new moderate hunger rates are still higher than their 12-year averages.

Severe hunger, meanwhile, was down by two points in Mindanao and the rest of Luzon to three percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.

It stayed at 3.7 percent in the Visayas and rose to 4.7 percent from three percent in Metro Manila.

SWS said the new figures are above their 12-year averages in Metro Manila and the Visayas but are lower in the balance of Luzon and Mindanao.

Meanwhile, self-rated poverty dropped to 40 percent from 44 percent in the rest of Luzon and to 53 percent from 56 percent in Mindanao.

It rose in the Visayas from 58 percent to 61 percent and in Metro Manila from 48 percent to 49 percent.

It declined by three points to 55 percent in rural areas and by one point to 43 percent in urban areas.

Food poverty, meanwhile, fell by 12 points to 36 percent in Mindanao.

However, it rose in other areas: from 35 percent to 41 percent in Metro Manila; from 45 percent to 50 percent in the Visayas and from 31 percent to 32 percent in the rest of Luzon.

SWS said the self-rated poverty threshold, or the monthly budget poor households say they need in order not to consider themselves poor, remained sluggish in an indication of belt-tightening.

As of last month, the median poverty thresholds for poor households was P10,000 in Metro Manila; P9,500 in the rest of Luzon; P6,000 in the Visayas and P5,000 in Mindanao.

The median food-poverty threshold, meanwhile, was P6,000 in Metro Manila; P4,000 in the rest of Luzon and P3,000 both in Visayas and Mindanao.

All thresholds have been surpassed in the past, the SWS said.

In Metro Manila, the median poverty threshold was equivalent to only P6,146 in terms of 2000 purchasing power. The deflated threshold of below P10,000 per month, it added, is a “throwback to living standards of over 10 years ago,” the SWS said.

The P10,000 per month is equivalent to P16,270 in the September 2010 cost of living and subtracting one from the other yields P6,270, the extent of belt-tightening that took place, the pollster said.

Metro Manila’s median food poverty threshold of P6,000, meanwhile, is equivalent to only P3,883 in terms of 2000 purchasing power. It is equivalent to P9,270 per month at the September 2010 cost of food. Subtracting the 2000 threshold of P6,000 yields P3,270, which is how much food-poor Metro Manila households have lowered their living standards, SWS said.

The SWS used face-to-face interviews with 1,200 adults. It has sampling error margins of plus or minus three percentage points for national percentages and plus or minus six percentage points for area percentages. –(The Philippine Star)