OF TREES AND FOREST

(Part I)
 

Two surveys released by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) one week apart this new year really piqued my interest. No, they are not surveys about the senatorial candidates for the 2025 national elections (although I would find that interesting as well). The two surveys are about self-rated poverty, which was released on Jan. 8, 2025 and hunger, released on Jan. 14. Both studies were conducted between Dec. 12 to 18 among 2,160 respondents nationwide with a sampling error margin of two percent according to the SWS website (www.sws.org.ph) which, by the way has a massive amount of data and information about the country over a long period of time. 

In the first survey, SWS found that 63 percent of the respondents rated themselves as “mahirap” or poor with an additional 11 percent rating themselves as borderline. The SWS website defined borderline as those who placed themselves “on a line dividing poor and not poor.” Only 26 percent rated themselves as “hindi mahirap” or not poor. I can relate to the classification made by the SWS as I have experienced all stages in the poverty spectrum. 

I was born to poverty in Tondo, Manila. We had to work hard to lift us out of an impoverished life. I did my part by working at an early age as I became my Nanay Curing’s assistant selling shrimps and fish in Divisoria. I also have a pretty good idea of the “borderline” classification because at some point we were in a situation when sometimes we had enough money to buy the necessities in life but at other times we would go back to struggling to provide for our family. In other words, we have experienced having enough income but struggled to remain there for a sustained period of time. For instance, there will be times when my father would have enough money to bring enough food for us but at other times we had to again stretch one can of corned beef by putting a lot of potatoes and water so it can feed all of us.

The way SWS measures poverty is really interesting. As Mahar Mangahas explained it in his Aug. 24, 2024 Inquirer column, they do not follow the government’s threshold but rather “lets the poor identify themselves, and then it asks those feeling poor how much they need for monthly family home expenses, in order not to feel that way.” Between actual poor people expressing their feelings of poverty and some poverty line determined by government economists, I think I would rather favor the former. Although to be fair, I also read government figures in order to get the whole picture.

At any rate, the SWS proclaimed that the “December 2024 percentage of Self-Rated Poor families of 63 percent… was the highest percentage of Self-Rated Poor families in 21 years, since 64 percent in November 2003.” The December numbers followed “the significant 12-point rise from 46 percent in March 2024 to 58 percent in June 2024”. An additional interesting note from the SWS website was their findings that “the 4-point increase in the nationwide Self-Rated Poverty between September 2024 and December 2024 was due to increases in the Visayas and Mindanao.”

A week later, their Social Weather Report noted a sharp increase in hunger among those who consider themselves as poor and not poor. It found that “25.9 percent of Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger – being hungry and not having anything to eat – at least once in the past three months.” The 25.9 percent who experienced hunger included those who experienced moderate hunger (experienced hunger “only once” or “or a few times”) and severe hunger (those who experienced it “often” or “always”). More significantly, the SWS report further noted that the “December 2024 hunger figure was…the highest since the record high 30.7 percent during the Covid-19 lockdowns in September 2020.”

It does not take an economist or a political scientist to figure out how these increases in self-rated poverty and involuntary hunger can potentially become a problem not just in terms of economic development but also in terms of political instability. We all know how significant increases in poverty and hungry rates can negatively impact the economy. Increasing healthcare cost, reducing productivity and limiting human capital development, a population that becomes poorer and experiences hunger can subvert our efforts at economic recovery and our vision for sustained growth.

In addition, as more people feel that their lives have worsened the more they tend to feel dissatisfaction with the political situation. We have seen it all before, and it is something we do not want to happen to our country. In my next column (part two), I will expound on this relationship between poverty and instability in the context of the upcoming 2025 midterm elections. 
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Note: The data presented here were obtained from the website of SWS (https://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20250108132633, and, https://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-2025011421061

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