At least 46 percent or nearly half of adult Filipinos are optimistic that their quality of life will improve in the next 12 months despite the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, a Social Weather Stations survey showed.
The SWS poll, conducted on June 26 to 29 and the last under the administration of then-President Rodrigo Duterte, used face-to-face interviews of 1,500 Filipino adults nationwide.
The survey results also showed 40 percent of the respondents saying their quality of life will stay the same, and 4 percent fear it will worsen. The remaining 11 percent did not give an answer.
SWS used the term “optimists” for those who believe their quality of life will improve, “pessimists” for those who think their quality of life will worsen, and “no change” for those who said it will stay the same.
The latest figures translate to a net personal optimism score of +42 (percentage of optimists minus percentage of pessimists), which is classified by SWS as “excellent.”
“The June 2022 net personal optimism score is three points above the very high +39 in April 2022. It is similar to the excellent +42 in December 2021, and just two points below the pre-pandemic level of excellent +44 in December 2019,” SWS said.
Net personal optimism rose in all areas except in Metro Manila.
SWS attributed the three-point rise in the national net personal optimism score from April 2022 to June 2022 to the increases in Mindanao (+35 to +39), Balance Luzon—or Luzon outside Metro Manila (+47 to +50), and the Visayas (+25 to +27), combined with a steady score in Metro Manila (+43).
Specifically, net personal optimism is higher among non-hungry families, reaching +43 among adults who belong to families that did not experience hunger in the past three months.
Those who belong to families that experienced hunger in general posted a +35 net personal optimism, higher than those who belong to families who experienced moderate hunger (+34).
A June 2022 SWS poll that was released earlier found that 11.6 percent of Filipino families, or an estimated 2.9 million, experienced involuntary hunger—being hungry and not having anything to eat—at least once in the past three months.
As for the past 12 months, Filipinos asked in the SWS poll had mixed views on how life was.
Some 31 percent of adult Filipinos said their quality of life got worse, while at least 29 percent said their life got better and 39 percent said it was the same compared to a year ago.
Compared with the first quarter survey of SWS, the number of Filipinos who said their lives worsened slightly went down by three percentage points from 34 percent in April.
The number of Filipinos who said their lives improved slightly went down as well by three percentage points from 32 percent in April.
Those who said their lives remained largely unchanged went up by five percentage points from 34 percent in April.