Majority of Filipinos rated themselves as either poor or borderline poor, a recent survey by the poll firm Social Weather Stations for the second quarter of the year showed.
Some 48 percent of the respondents, estimated to be about 12 million families, considered themselves poor while 29 percent rated themselves as borderline poor.
The number of families that considered themselves poor was slightly lower than the 49 percent logged in the first quarter of the year but still above the 45 percent pre-pandemic average in 2019.
Broken down, the percentage translates into 1.8 million “newly poor” families, 1 million “usually poor,” and 9.1 million “always poor.”
The number of respondents that considered themselves “borderline poor” was also lower than the 33 percent registered in the previous quarter.
Some 23 percent of the respondents rated themselves as “not poor,” up by six percentage points from the 17 percent recorded in the first quarter of the year.
“The movement of the Self-Rated Poor is compatible with the series of official poverty incidence rates,” SWS said.
“Still, it is both more up-to-date and revealing of the volatility of poverty during intermediate points of time,” it added.
The proportion of self-rated poor is highest in the Visayas region at 70 percent, followed by Mindanao with 51 percent, Metro Manila with 43 percent, and Balance Luzon with 38 percent.