Approximately half of Filipinos perceive themselves as poor: PH survey
A recent survey by the Philippines’ Social Weather Stations (SWS) indicates that almost half of Filipino households consider themselves to be in financial need.
The survey, which was conducted from September 28 to October 1, found that 48 percent of Filipino families described their financial status as “poor”, while 25 percent stated they were “not poor”, and 27 percent fell in the borderline category.
The survey also revealed that 6.6 percent, or 1.8 million families, were considered "newly poor," meaning they were not in this category 1 to 4 years ago.
In comparison to the June 2023 figures, the percentage of families rating themselves as “poor” increased by 3 points from 45 percent, while borderline families decreased by 6 points from 33 percent, and non-poor families saw an increase of 3 points from 22 percent.
This equates to approximately 13.2 million “self-rated” poor families in September, compared to 12.5 million in June. SWS arrived at these estimates by applying the percentage of self-rated poor respondents to the Philippine Statistics Authority's medium-population projections for 2023.
The SWS poll was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 1,200 adults and had a margin of sampling error of ±2.8 percent for national percentages.
