I like the expressions “See the trees, but don’t forget the forest” because there are numerous situations in real life to which it is perfectly applicable. For one reason or another—intentionally or otherwise—certain people go to such lengths to decide the trees but completely disregard the forest.
Cases in point are the surveys of self-rated poverty that polling organization Social Weather Stations regularly conducts among families belonging to the lower strata of Philippine society. The family heads included in the sample—usually 1,200 individuals—are asked to rate themselves with regard to their general economic and their food-availability situations. The questions are phrased along the lines of “Do you rate your family as poor?” and “Do you rate your family as food-poor?”
The result of the SWS surveys have always been heart-rending and very depressing. The results of the last survey—the one conducted during the last quarter of 2017—were no exceptions.
If one were to look for the forest—as opposed to the trees—of the survey results, it would be the finding that 46 percent of the respondents, or almost half of all Filipino families, rated themselves poor. That percentage translated to almost 10 million families. Even worse, 33 percent of the respondents rated their families as food-poor, which SWS defines as having experienced involuntary hunger at least once during the past three months.
Those are terrible findings. All that poverty, especially all that food poverty, in a country whose economy is currently growing annually at close to 7 percent. These findings are enough to make a grown man cry.
SWS’ surveys have produced these depressing findings for a long time. High self-rated poverty and food-poverty percentage were there during pre-Duterte administration also. The years of the two Aquinos, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo were times of much poverty self-rating also. No administration has had a monopoly of much self-rated poverty.
But that’s not the point. The point is that for decades and decades this country has had to countenance and live with so much poverty in general and food poverty in particular.
No administration will ever have the courage and the will to acknowledge that the forest is there: There is a persistent amount of unacceptable poverty. But administrations—such as the current one—should acknowledge, not the very least the existence of the forest. Do they? They don’t. They prefer, instead, to discuss the trees that populate the forest.
Instead they point to things like the decline of the overall self-rated poverty total from that of a previous year or the preceding quarter, or the improvement of the poverty situation in a particular region or the slower rise in the self-rated food poverty compared to a preceding year.
Consider a newspaper report on the press briefing given by the presidential spokesman after the release of the latest SWS findings: “Harry Roque Jr. noted that the percentage of Filipino families who considered themselves dropped from 47 percent in September to 44 percent in December. When it was pointed out that the 3-percentage point drop was equivalent to the survey’s margin of error, Roque said, ‘It’s still an improvement, modest as it was.’”
Good Lord! Forty-three percent of Filipino families rate themselves poor, and Mr. Roque talks about a modest improvement in the incidence of poverty. Ridiculous.
There’s no denying that significantly bringing down the self-rated poverty percentage is done easily within the life-span of an administration, but those whose job it is to discuss the incidence and their poverty in the country must stop trying to finance or to skirt the fact that there is an enormous poverty forest in our midst.
Stop talking about the trees and start addressing the forest. Forty-six percent of Filipino families rate themselves as poor: that, to repeat, is the forest.
