ABOUT 2.3-million Filipino families or 9.9 percent of the population said they suffered hunger in the first quarter of 2018, according to a Social Weather Stations survey released on Monday.
The numbers showed a significant improvement from the December 2017 survey, in which self-rated hunger rose to 15.9 percent.
Malacañang on Monday welcomed the results of the survey.
“Obviously, there are fewer people perceiving themselves as being hungry because there are fewer people who are hungry. Change has come,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque told reporters.
The improvement in the latest survey means there were 3.6-million less families who suffered hunger in the first three months of 2018 compared with the last three months of last year.
The figure has been below 15 percent since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office. It was lowest at 9.5 percent in June 2017 or a year into his term.
The 9.9 percent is the sum of 306,000 families “often” or “always” hungry (severe hunger) and about two-million families who experienced hunger “only once” or “a few times” (moderate hunger).
Severe hunger fell from from 3.7 percent in the last three months of 2017. Moderate hunger fell from 12.2 percent in the December survey.
The highest incidence of self-rated hunger was in Balance Luzon, where 1.1-million families said they suffered hunger at least once in the past three months.
There were 190,000 families in Metro Manila, 583,000 families in the Visayas, and 390,000 families in Mindanao who said they suffered hunger.
SWS said self-rated hunger fell in all areas. It fell by 8.7 points in Metro Manila, 6.7 points in Balance Luzon, 0.3 points in the Visayas and 8.0 points in Mindanao.
The SWS survey measures the percentage of the population that said they experienced “involuntary hunger”-they didn’t have food to eat”•at least once in the past three months.
The 9.9 percent in the March 2018 survey shows a return to hunger’s downward trend.
“This is only the second time hunger has been in the single-digit range since March 2004,” SWS said in its report.
Self-rated hunger fluctuates but it has been mostly a single-digit number from 1998, when SWS started conducting the survey, until 2004, when it was 7.4 percent.
It has been at double-digits since except in June 2017 and March 2018. The highest incidence of self-rated hunger was recorded by SWS in March 2012 at 23.8 percent.
The numbers improved beginning March 2015 when the figure was 16 percent or below.
The survey was conducted from March 23 to 27 using face-to-face interviews with 1,200 adult respondents.