More Filipinos considered themselves poor as of December last year, a Social Weather Stations survey showed Thursday.
Around 13.1-million Filipino families or 54 percent labeled themselves as poor in a Dec. 13 to 16 SWS poll, higher than the estimated 10.3-million families or 42 percent in September.
Among them, 9.7 million classified themselves as “always poor,” 1.8 million were “usually poor,” and 1.6 million were “newly poor.”
The latest self-rated poverty rate was the highest since the 55-percent figure recorded in September 2014.
The self-poverty rates were highest in the Visayas and Mindanao with 67 percent and 64 percent, respectively. Those were followed by Luzon with 47 percent and Metro Manila with 41 percent.
The quarterly 12-point rise in nationwide self-rated poverty was due to sharp increases in all areas.
Metro Manila and Luzon saw the highest increase with 16 and 13 points, respectively. These were followed by Mindanao (11 points) and the Visayas (8 points).
The poll also revealed that the self-rated poverty threshold”•or the minimum monthly budget poor families needed for home expenses in order not to be poor”•was P12,000 in December 2019.
The same survey also showed that self-rated food poverty rose to 35 percent in December 2019, six points higher than the 29 percent in SWS’ September 2019 survey.
This figure of food-poor families translates to 8.6 million families in December and 7.1-million families in September.
The poll involved 1,200 adults nationwide and had a sampling error margins of ±3 percent for national percentages.