Rich man, poor man
The threshold only asks whether a household can cover minimum basic needs. It says nothing about savings, emergencies, or plans beyond next payday.
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The threshold only asks whether a household can cover minimum basic needs. It says nothing about savings, emergencies, or plans beyond next payday.
Hooray! The World Bank says we’ve become an upper-middle-income country. Now try bringing that piece of good news to your nearest wet market.
“Good morning, ma’am,” you tell the meat vendor. “The Philippines’ gross national income per person just hit US$4,850.”
She smiles politely, too busy to recall those college lessons on GNI, GDP and GNP. “That’ll be P350 for a kilo of pork kasim,” she says, handing you the main ingredient for the humba you’ll serve at lunch.
At the fish stall, galunggong — that dependable companion on the Filipino table whenever payday feels too far away — now averages P239 a kilo. By the time you’ve gone through your market list for a family of three, you’ve stopped playing economist.
This is why the debate over the World Bank’s announcement has gone so silly. One camp treats the reclassification as proof the economy is booming, pointing to years of steady GDP growth. The other dismisses it as fantasy, pointing at market prices as the only evidence that matters.
Both have a point, and both are still arguing past each other, because the World Bank simply said the Philippine economy, taken as a whole, now produces enough income to belong in a higher statistical category.
That’s worth recognizing, in the same way passing an entrance exam deserves congratulations even though it’s still a long way from a diploma.
The real gap is between escaping poverty and joining the middle class. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) puts the poverty threshold at P13,873 a month for a family of five — less than P500 a day for the entire household.
A family can earn one peso above that line and vanish from the poverty statistics without living anything close to a middle-class life. The threshold only asks whether a household can cover minimum basic needs. It says nothing about savings, emergencies, or plans beyond next payday.
PSA data from its 2023 income and expenditure survey found that more than one in four Filipinos who have climbed above the poverty line remain classified as economically insecure, at real risk of sliding back down after a single shock: an illness, a job lost, one bad typhoon season.
That statistic is really the whole thesis. It means millions of Filipino households have escaped poverty without escaping precarity, which is exactly the gap the market-vendor conversation exposes and the GNI headline obscures.
Poverty is measured by whether you can get through today. The middle class is measured by whether you can face tomorrow with confidence.
The Philippines has crossed the first threshold. The second one won’t be crossed by GNI growth alone.
Closing it means turning income growth into income security: expanding social insurance and unemployment support for informal workers who make up more than half the labor force and have no cushion when a shock hits; building real wage growth into sectors beyond BPO and OFW remittances; and making health and education costs less likely to bankrupt a family in one bad year.
Until then, the upper-middle-income label will keep describing the economy Filipinos read about, not the one they shop in.
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