32 percent of Filipinos optimistic of improving quality of life: SWS

The Second Quarter 2007 Social Weather Survey found 32% of Filipinos optimistic of improving their Personal Quality Of Life in the next twelve months, 11% pessimistic that it will get worse, and the rest expecting it to stay the same.

According to the survey, fielded over June 27-30, the difference of personal optimists over pessimists of +22 (correctly rounded) is termed Net Personal Optimism.

Since Net Personal Optimism commonly ranges between +10 and +19, the present situation is relatively favorable, historically speaking.

The June 2007 survey also found 24% optimistic that the Philippine economy would get better over the next twelve months, and another 24% pessimistic that it would get worse.

This gives a Net Economic Optimism of exactly zero, which can be interpreted as an expectation of a stability over the coming year.
Stability has been the expectation in the past four surveys, and is a favorable finding, since, from mid-2001 to mid-2006, economic pessimists heavily outnumbered economic optimists, by at least 11 points and as much as 50 points.

On the other hand, on the matter of the change in Personal Quality of Life compared to twelve months ago, the June 2007 survey found only 21% saying that their lives had improved, compared to 39% who said that it had worsened.

Thus, from the past, Gainers minus Losers equals -18 points, the negative sign signifying a gap. If fewer got better off than those who got worse off, then economic inequality increased.

(However, a gap of less than 20 points is not too unfavorable. During 2001-2005 the gap was never less than 21 points, and reached as high as 43. Since the start of 2006 the gap has been below 20 points in five out of eight SWS survey rounds.)

Net Personal Optimism during 2007 has been +21 to +24 in Metro Manila, +15 to +23 in Balance Luzon, +12 to +22 in Visayas, and +19 to +20 in Mindanao.  (SWS has more than two readings in the first half of 2007 due to the special election surveys.)

Only recently, personal optimism has been a little lower among the middle-to-upper ABC classes. Most of the time in the past two decades, the ABCs have had an advantage over the Ds and the Es.

Optimism about the future Economy is based on a question about the economy in general and not about oneself in particular. It is normal to be more optimistic about one's own quality of life than about the economy as a whole.

The first half of 2007 found 21% to 25% expecting the Philippine economy to get better in the next 12 months, and 20% to 24% expecting it to get worse.

This shows Net Economic Optimism to be neutral, which is more favorable than in March 2006 when economic pessimists outnumbered optimists by 23 points.

By area, the economic optimism is slightly positive in Balance of Luzon and Mindanao, and slightly negative in Metro Manila and the Visayas.

The SWS indicators of economic trends - as distinct from economic states - show an improvement in optimism about the coming twelve months. At the same time, it continues to record downward movement from twelve months ago to the present.

The SWS indicators of future economic trends are the people's perceived directions of forthcoming change in (a) their Personal Quality of Life, and (b) the economy as a whole. The indicator of the past economic trend is the people's perceived direction of change in their Personal Quality of Life from twelve months ago to the present.

(An indicator of trend is like the directional light on a elevator, which tells if it is on the way up or on the way down. It is different from an indicator of a state, which tells the present level of the elevator.)

The survey was conducted over June 27-30, 2007 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults divided into random samples of 300 each in Metro Manila, the Balance of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.