Holding on to the sharp edge of a knife

Filipinos increasingly find it difficult to romanticize life. Despite an incredible capacity for self-deception and a talent for fudging reality checks, they now acknowledge that kapit sa patalim more precisely describes how most of them live in this unfortunate country.

In Pulse Asia’s latest national quarterly survey, the October 2001 Ulat ng Bayan, a representative sample of 1,200 Filipinos 18 years old and above confirms this reading of their material condition. A record-breaking 73 percent of these respondents self-rate their families as being "poor" or "very poor", a remarkable increase from the 56 percent – an already disconcertingly high proportion of respondents – who claimed this status in the earlier June 2001 Ulat ng Bayan survey. Assuming a base of 45 million adults 18 years old and above, the present 73 percent "poor" or "very poor" translate into 32.8 million Filipinos leading difficult lives. Between June and October 2001, the two surveys indicate that as many as 7.6 million people could have been added to the ranks of this nation’s mahirap or mahirap na mahirap.

Living has become a much more expensive proposition. Half of all those surveyed in Pulse Asia’s October 2001 Ulat ng Bayan say they need at least P10,000 monthly to cover their most basic expenses and thus escape being poor. In Metro Manila, the respondents’ estimate runs 50 percent higher or P15,000 a month.

To cover no more than their food needs, half of the respondents nationwide believe at least P4,000 monthly would enable them and their families to graduate from poverty. Among Metro Manilans, no less than P6,000 monthly is the predictably higher estimate for meeting this basic need for material sustenance.

What do these figures mean? Compared to estimates provided by a nationally representative sample of adult Filipinos a full year ago, the new survey figures represent a 25 percent increase in what Filipinos say is needed monthly to cover all their basic expenses (from P8,000 to P10,000) and a 33 percent increase in terms solely of their food needs (from P3,000 to P4,000).

Considering that these figures are all estimates for what the respondents say their families need to avoid being poor, one wonders whether Filipinos have not become superbly efficient in curbing the level of resources a family needs to be poverty-free. Take the survey respondents’ median monthly estimate for feeding a family so that it may no longer be poor, about P4,000 a month. Consider that a Filipino family on the average has about 5 members. That means allocating about P800 a month per family member for bodily sustenance, or just under P27 daily. One is actually saying that if one could assign P9 per meal per family member, he/she would feel the family well-fed enough to and therefore no longer poor!

A special note needs to be attached to the issue of food among poor Filipinos. Food is the single biggest expense for 57 percent of all survey respondents, bedevilling even more those respondents who – in being among the poorest class E – are in the least position to bear this implacable expense. For 1 out of every five respondents nationwide, food outlays eat up anywhere between 76 percent to 100 percent of whatever income the family might be lucky enough to scrape together! Food’s criticality as an indicator of current hard times is fully underscored by the admission of four out of every 10 respondents nationwide that being able to eat enough is a most urgent, daily challenge in their lives.

In view of these data, one must forget those crazy claims about Filipinos having overly high expectations regarding what a decent quality of life brings and that they demand far too much – the canard even says, too soon – from their much beleaguered and well-intentioned, patriotic authorities. There is much in the present survey which indicates that for overly many Filipinos nowadays, food may well be the prime directive. Those who would now speak of freedom and other truly noble human values – in this as well as the other world – may do no more than distract.

Faced by a long history of invariably deteriorating material conditions, Filipinos hanging on the thin edge of a knife may now be equating their simple survival with the fullness of life itself and, in their desperation, now praise the performance of their authorities as only those without rational hopes can.