About 16.8 percent of Filipino families have reported having experienced involuntary hunger, or hunger due to lack of food to eat, at least once in the past three months, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey released on Monday, July 12, showed.

The SWS survey conducted from April 28 to May 2, 2021, with 1,200 respondents revealed that 4.2 million families experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months.

The latest hunger rate is 0.8 points higher than the 16 percent or an estimated 4 million families in November 2020 and double the December 2019 pre-pandemic level of 8.8 percent or an estimated 2.1 million families.

"Mindanao now has the highest incidence of hunger at 20.7 percent (estimated 1.2 million families), followed by the Visayas at 16.3 percent (estimated 776,000 families), Balance Luzon at 15.7 percent (estimated 1.8 million families), and Metro Manila at 14.7 percent (estimated 496,000 families)," SWS said.

In November 2020, hunger was at 23.3 percent (estimated 780,000 families) in Metro Manila, 16 percent (estimated 909,000 families) in Mindanao, 14.4 percent (estimated 1.6 million families) in Balance Luzon, and 14.3 percent (estimated 674,000 families) in Visayas.

'Moderate' hunger at 14.1 percent; 'severe' hunger at 2.7 percent

SWS explained that the 16.8 percent hunger rate in May 2021 is the sum of 14.1 percent (estimated 3.6 million families) who experienced "moderate hunger" and 2.7 percent (estimated 674,000 families) who experienced "severe hunger."

Moderate hunger refers to those who experienced hunger "only once" or "a few times" in the last three months, while severe hunger refers to those who experienced it "often" or "always" in the last three months.

Hunger rises among poor families

The May 2021 survey also revealed last July 9 that 49 percent of families rated themselves as poor, 33 percent "borderline poor," and 17 percent "not poor."

SWS said 32 percent of families rated themselves as "food-poor," 45 percent were "borderline food-poor," and 23 percent "not food-poor."

"From November 2020 to May 2021, overall Hunger (i.e., moderate plus severe) rose among the self-rated poor, from 21.7 percent to 23.5 percent. It hardly changed among the non-poor (not poor plus borderline poor) over the same period, moving from 10.6 percent to 10.3 percent," SWS explained.

It added that overall hunger rose among the self-rated food-poor, up from 28.1 percent in November 2020 to 32.9 percent in May 2021.

Meanwhile, it declined by 1.2 points among the non-food-poor from 10.5 percent to 9.3 percent.