13-M families rate themselves poor

More than 13 million families believe they live in poverty, a new poll by the Social Weather Stations or SWS released on Wednesday showed the non-commissioned SWS survey, conducted from 28 September to 1 October, showed that 48 percent of Filipinos rated themselves poor in September, up from 45 percent in June.

The number translates to 13.2 million families considering themselves poor as of September, an increase of about 700,000 families from 12.5 million in June.

"Compared to June 2023, the percentage of Poor families rose by 3 points from 45 percent, while Borderline families fell by 6 points from 33 percent, and Not Poor families rose by 3 points from 22 percent," the SWS said in its report.

SWS also found that 27 percent of Filipinos thought they were "borderline poor." Twenty-five percent of those people thought they were not poor.

More Filipinos think they're now poor

The SWS poll said that almost 2 million people now think of themselves as newly poor. In other words, they didn't think they were poor at least five years ago but acknowledged that their living conditions had changed as of September 2023.

"Of the estimated 13.2 million Self-Rated Poor families in September 2023, 1.8 million were Newly Poor, 1.7 million were Usually Poor, and 9.7 million were Always Poor," the survey said.

The number of people who said they were poor rose by three percentage points between June and September 2023. This was due to rises in all areas in the country. Still, Mindanao had the biggest increase in families who said they were poor, rising from 54 percent to 71 percent.

Families in Balance Luzon who said they were poor went up from 35 percent to 39 percent, and families in Metro Manila who said they were poor went up from 35 percent to 38 percent.

In the Visayas, the number of people who said they were poor rose from 57 percent to 59 percent.

The SWS survey conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,200 adults, 300 each from Balance Luzon, Metro Manila, Visayas and Mindanao.

The sampling error margins were ±2.8 percent for national percentages and ±5.7 percent each for Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.