Half of Filipino families (50%), or about 14.2 million, consider themselves poor in September 2025, slightly higher than the 49%, or 13.7 million families, recorded in June, based on a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).
In the latest survey, results showed that 12% of Filipino families rate themselves as Borderline (by placing themselves on a line dividing ‘poor’ and ‘not poor’), and 38% rating themselves as not poor.
Self-rated poverty was most pronounced in Mindanao, where 69% of families identified as poor, followed by the Visayas at 54%, Metro Manila at 43%, and Balance Luzon at 42%.
Compared to June 2025, self-rated poverty increased by 7 percentage points in Metro Manila (up from 36%) and by 4 percentage points in Balance Luzon (up from 38%).
In contrast, it decreased by 6 percentage points in the Visayas (down from 60%), while it remained steady at 69% in Mindanao.
According to SWS, the nationwide increase of 1 percentage point in self-rated poverty from June 2025 to September 2025 was attributed to the combined increases in Metro Manila and Balance Luzon, along with the decline in the Visayas and stable figures in Mindanao.
The survey also found that 41% of families consider themselves “food poor,” while 11% classified themselves as “food borderline” (situated between “food poor” and “not food poor”). Meanwhile, 47% rated themselves as “not food poor.”
The SWS noted that the 41% of families self-rated as food poor in September 2025 was unchanged since April 2025. This figure represents the lowest percentage since 33% in March 2024 and is 3 percentage points below the 2024 annual average of 44%.
When asked if they had ever experienced being non-poor (either “not poor” or “borderline”) in the past, the responses revealed that among the self-rated poor families, 5.7% were classified as “newly poor” (non-poor 1-4 years ago), 8.7% as “usually poor” (non-poor five or more years ago), and 36.0% as “always poor” (never experienced being non-poor).
Overall, of the estimated 14.2 million self-rated poor families in September 2025, 1.6 million were classified as newly poor, 2.4 million as usually poor, and 10.1 million as always poor.
The percentage of households that rated themselves as poor was applied to the medium-population projections for 2025 from the Philippine Statistics Authority to estimate the number of Self-Rated Poor families.
The nationwide survey was conducted from September 24 to 30, with 1,500 respondents aged 18 and above, and has a margin of error of ±3% for national percentages.
