Survey reveals 4mn Filipinos experienced hunger in March

A father feeds his son his free meal during a feeding programme in the slum area in Baseco, Tondo city, metro Manila yesterday.

By Fatima Cielo Cancel & Catherine S Valente/Manila Times

Nearly 4mn or 19.2% of Filipino families experienced hunger in March, with some saying that they came to a point where they did not have anything to eat at all, according to a recent survey of pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS).

The latest tally is 3% higher than figures recorded in December that showed that only 16.3% of Filipino families had nothing on their table.

The survey, first published in SWS’ media partner BusinessWorld, was conducted from March 19 to 22, when the unemployment rate was also reported to be high.

The survey noted that an increase in the number of hungry families happened even if there was a drop in self-rated poverty. Self-rated poverty fell two percentage points to 52% in March from 54% in December.

Hunger was seen to increase in both poor and non-poor families.

Moderate hunger, defined as “having nothing to eat once or a few times in the last three months” increased by three points to 15.6% (3.2mn families) from 12.7%, the SWS reported.

It added that families who experienced severe hunger or families who said that they were hungry often remain at 3.6% or about 726,000.

The SWS used face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults nationwide in the survey, which has error margins of ±3% for national and ±6% for area percentages. The SWS noted the increase in overall hunger in all regions except in Metro Manila, where hunger fell by four points to 21.7% or about 615,000 families, from 25.3% in December.

On the other hand, there was a notable increase in overall hunger rate in Mindanao. From only 20% in December, overall hunger in the region increased by 9.2% to 29.2% or about 1.4mn families.

Overall hunger also increased in Luzon to 14.7% or 1.3mn families, and to 15% or 580,000 families in the Visayas region from only 13.3%.

The March survey showed that moderate hunger increased in Mindanao from 16% to 22.7%; 10.7% to 13.7% in the Visayas; and 9.7% to 12% in Balance Luzon.

However, it fell from 19.3% to only 17.3% in Metro Manila.

The SWS said the recent data in moderate hunger is higher than the 14-year moderate hunger rates recorded in all areas.

Severe hunger fell in all areas except Mindanao, the survey showed. Severe hunger fell a point in Balance Luzon to only 2.7 and more than a point in Metro Manila (4.3%) and Visayas (1.3) region but increased by three points in Mindanao region to 6.7%.

 The survey said severe hunger rates in both Luzon and the Visayas are lower than the 14-year averages. However, it is higher in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

In the recent survey, SWS said overall hunger increased to 25.5 from only 22.7% among the self-rated poor people. It also increased by three percentage points from 9% to 12.2% among the non-poor. It added that hunger increased greatly among the self-rated poor from 25.8% to 33.1% and from 8.8 to 10.4% to the people who said that they are not too-poor. Despite this, SWS said food poverty decreased from 44% in December to 39% in March. In Malacanang, officials said they do not take the survey results alone as the sole benchmark used by the government for its poverty-alleviation priorities.  In a press briefing, Palace deputy spokesperson Abigail Valte said the government is committed to addressing hunger but it is not solely relying on surveys as benchmarks for its interventions.

“If you take a look at the results of the survey, quarter-to-quarter, we’ve seen that results tend to be a little volatile; meaning, it goes up, it goes down,” she explained. “This is partly why we don’t tend to take the survey alone as the sole benchmark for prioritising several areas for us to concentrate or to at least target these areas,” she added.

Valte said the government will continue to expand its intervention programmes such as the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme that benefits 3.9mn families.