If more than half of Filipino families consider themselves “poor,” shouldn’t that be enough cause for serious concern for the administration, and therefore much more efforts and resources should be directed towards addressing this situation?
It’s the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, conducted from March 26 to March 29, that found more than half of Filipino families rating themselves as “poor” while 39 percent considered themselves “food poor.”
The survey result found that 51 percent or 14 million Filipino families consider themselves “poor,” similar to the 51 percent or 12.9 families in December 2022.
Meanwhile, 30 percent of Filipino families rated themselves as “borderline” poor, placing themselves on a horizontal line dividing “poor” and “not poor.”
Only 19 percent rated themselves as “not poor.”
The survey also revealed that 35 percent of Filipino families rated themselves as “borderline food poor,” placing themselves on a horizontal line dividing “food poor” and “not food-poor,” and 26 percent rated themselves as “not food poor.”
The steady nationwide self-rated poverty scores between December last year and this March indicate that government must intensify efforts to help the poor improve their quality of life.
The government has endeavored to assist the very poor through cash assistance and food packs from the Department of Social work and Development (DSWD) during periods of high inflation and disasters.
There is also the Pangtawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) or conditional and unconditional cash transfers to the poorest of the poor to tide them over until they can rise above adversity.
But obviously these moves are palliative at best, and cannot be sustainable in the long run as this would deplete already limited government resources.
What’s more important is a whole-of-society approach to the poverty problem. Various frontline departments and agencies, or those directly dealing with economic concerns, should work closely together to give the poor the tools to improve their quality of life.
These can take the form of job assistance, provision of livelihood opportunities, education support, skills training/upgrading, among others.
Then the private sector and civil society groups should do their part as well, with targeted assistance to the most vulnerable communities.
The previous administration, if we remember right, aimed to reduce poverty in the country from 22 to 16 percent during its six years in office.
But the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the attainment of this goal.
The second Marcos administration now wants to bring the poverty rate a low of 9 percent by 2028. But can this goal be achieved?
Perhaps our economic managers can enlighten us on how they will go about it.
