SWS releases Q2 hunger index

About 1.8 million Filipino households nationwide went hungry at least once in the last three months, according to a non-commissioned quarterly opinion poll conducted in May.

Out of 1,200 respondents surveyed by the Social Weather Stations (SWS), 11.5 percent said they experienced hunger at least once in the last three months – largely unchanged from the 11.1 percent a quarter ago in March.

The SWS said every one percentage point in hunger is equivalent to 157,000 households.

Of the number who said they went hungry, 3.1 percent or half a million households were "often or always hungry," unchanged from the 3.6 percent a quarter ago.

However, the number of households that experienced hunger either "once or a few times" went up from 7.5 percent a quarter ago to 8.4 percent or 1.3 million households in May.

While the overall number of households that went hungry went up for three consecutive quarters – 10.4 percent in November 2001 and 9.3 percent in September 2001 – it was still much lower than 16.1 percent a year ago.

According to the SWS, the incidence of severe hunger "fell rapidly" each quarter from 6 percent in March 2001 to 3.3 percent in November 2001.

Meanwhile, the incidence of moderate hunger peaked at 10.1 percent in March 2001. But after falling to 5.7 percent in September 2001, it went up to 7.1 percent in November 2001 and continued climbing.

The rising incidence of moderate hunger, the SWS said, accounted for the upward movement of the total number of households that experienced hunger. – Norman Sison