MANILA, Philippines — A new Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey found that 39% of Filipinos feel their lives are better now compared to 12 months ago.
The survey, which was released on Thursday, September 19, showed 23% of Filipino said that life got worse while 37% answered that it was the same as before.
Related Stories
Combining all of the numbers, there is a net gainer score of +15, which is classified as “very high” by the SWS.
“The June 2024 Net Gainer score was 10 points up from fair +5 in March 2024 and December 2023. It was just 3 points below the very high +18 in December 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic,” the SWS said.
Net gainers were positive across all areas, though there were differences in the net gain scores.
Balance Luzon (areas outside of Metro Manila) had the highest number of net gainers, with a rate of +26. Metro Manila had a score of +16, Mindanao had +7 and Visayas had a rate of +1 net gainers.
When examined by educational attainment, the SWS found that college graduates are more likely to believe that life will improve compared to those who did not finish elementary school.
Here is the net gainer rates per educational attainment:
- College graduates: +21
- High school graduates: +19
- Elementary graduates: +14
- Non-elementary graduates: 0
Likewise, the SWS found that people from non-hungry families were more likely to believe that their life had gotten better.
- Non-hungry: +18
- Moderately hungry: +12
- Severely Hungry: -17
The SWS said that net gainer scores were typically in the negatives until it started to rise in 2016, then declined again once the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. There has been improvement since then but the numbers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The survey was taken from June 23 to July 1 using face-to-face interviews among 1,500 adults across the country.
A total of 600 people were interviewed in Balance Luzon, and 300 people were interviewed in Metro Manila, Visayas and Mindanao each.