Self-rated poverty at 11.4 M families, worst in 8 years

MANILA, Philippines - Some 11.4 million or slightly more than half of Filipino families claimed they were poor in the last quarter, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) said in its latest report.

The SWS poll, taken from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1, found 52 percent consider themselves poor.

The latest poverty figure, however, was three points lower than the third quarter’s 55 percent, an estimated 12.1 million families.

SWS attributed the three-point decline in nationwide self-rated poverty rate to a seven-point dip in balance Luzon.

This quarter’s nationwide result brings the full-year average to 54 percent – the worst under the current administration. The same average was recorded in 2006, the SWS noted.

By geographic area, self-rated poverty fell to 45 percent from 52 percent in Luzon, excluding Metro Manila.

It remained unchanged in Metro Manila and the Visayas at 43 percent and 65 percent, respectively.

In Mindanao, self-rated poverty fell by one point to 60 percent.

Nearly half ‘food-poor’

 The poll also found some 9.1 million households or 41 percent who considered themselves food-poor.

This was slightly lower than the 43 percent recorded three months earlier.

This year’s average self-rated food poverty rate, also at 41 percent, is worse than 2013’s 39 percent and the same as 2012’s rate, the SWS said.

The drop in self-rated food poverty this quarter was due to lower figures in Metro Manila and in the Visayas, combined with steady rates in balance Luzon and Mindanao.

Self-rated food poverty fell in Metro Manila to 24 percent from 30 percent three months earlier.

In the Visayas, the rate dipped to 51 percent this quarter from 53 percent in the previous quarter.

It stayed at 37 percent this quarter in balance Luzon and 52 percent in Mindanao.

The survey used face-to-face interviews with 1,800 adults nationwide.

It had sampling error margins of plus or minus two percentage points for national percentages, plus or minus six percentage points each for Metro Manila, balance Luzon and Mindanao, and plus or minus three percentage points for the Visayas.

The SWS survey also found the self-rated poverty threshold at a record-high in Metro Manila and the Visayas at P20,000 from P15,000 last quarter and P12,000 from P8,000, respectively. It stayed at P10,000 in Mindanao, and fell to P8,000 from P10,000 in balance Luzon.

Self-rated poverty threshold is the monthly budget that poor households need for home expenses in order not to consider themselves as poor in general.

“The minimum home budget is less than the minimum income that it (household) needs because it excludes work-related expenses like transportation,” the SWS explained.

Redefining ‘poor’

Amid criticisms of the implementation of the conditional cash transfer program for indigent families, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman cited the need for a change in how Filipinos should perceive the poor.

“We need to break our old concept of how a poor Filipino looks like,” Soliman said yesterday during a meeting with Cordillera mayors and officials. “It doesn’t mean that when they are dressed clean, they are not poor,” Soliman said.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development chief has been parrying allegations that some beneficiaries of the CCT program were not indigents.

The Commission on Audit earlier said more than 21,000 CCT beneficiaries were not poor. But this was denied by Soliman.

Payments of P1.081 billion to more than 364,000 beneficiaries questioned earlier by the COA had been accounted for, she explained.

“We become judgmental to the point that the poor to us are always dirty, donning tattered unclean clothing. That is not the case anymore,” she said. “Some beneficiaries really use their best clothes when queuing at the bank to get their monthly CCT entitlements because for some it’s their first time to go to banks,” she said. “So clothes should not be a measure anymore.

“The poor take a bath two times a day, wear tidy clothes and look their best,” the DSWD chief said.

The discussions over redefining “who is poor” in the country, Soliman said, have even reached Congress, which approved her department’s over P1-billion budget that extends government’s poverty alleviation efforts to the “near poor.”

Soliman, citing standards set by the Asian Development Bank, said “near poor” comprise minimum wage workers and low wage government workers.

For 2015, the DSWD targets to reach out to 5.3 million “poor” Filipinos previously identified in the 2009 National Household Targeting System. – With  Artemio Dumlao