Less poor Filipinos?

Local and national officials run and promise during their campaign that, if elected, life will be better for their voters, constituents, their barangay, towns, cities and the whole country.

Have the lives of the poor Filipinos throughout our country improved through the years?

Since regular, genuine poverty statistics (for the whole nation and disaggregated by regions, provinces, towns and cities) are helpful barometer of the performance and achievements of elected officials for their poor constituents, and more importantly, can monitor/mirror the true state of our people to guide genuine policy for the upliftment of our poor, such regular data collection and reporting should be prioritized and required.

Regretfully, available poverty statistics for all provinces, regions and cities are not only not completely/regularly updated (such total and disaggregated poverty statistics available from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) was for the year 2023).

The latest 2025 PSA Poverty Statistics (cited by the Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DEPDev) which showed that “a) 6.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty between 2023 and 2025, b) that the number of Filipinos living below the poverty threshold—P14,634 monthly income for a family of five—fell from 17.5 million in 2023 to 11 million in 2025, and, c) that fewer than one in 10 Filipinos is living below the poverty line” have been critically questioned as “being unrealistic and underestimating the actual number of poor families since the PSA-pegged average national poverty threshold of P96 per person per day is self-evidently small, very low, and an unrealistic standard” according to IBON Foundation Executive Director Sonny Africa.

Who are the poor, how many they are depend not only on how poverty is defined, who are considered poor, but Africa added - “it matters how ‘poverty’ is measured. For example, compare the PSA’s 6.4% of poor families in 2025 with the 51% of self-rated poor families reported by Social Weather Stations (SWS).”

ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio also called the PSA report “outdated, doctored, dangerously detached from the daily suffering of millions of Filipinos” since, according to him, “a decent living wage in the country currently stands at P1,312 per day, highlighting the wide gap between the government’s poverty threshold (P96 per person) and the realities faced by many Filipinos.”

Recent July 4-11 research results shared by OCTA showed the following: “a) the number of Filipino families who consider themselves poor climbed to 10.3 million in July 2026, b) the self-rated poverty rate observed a 4% increase from the 35% (around 9.2 million self-rated poor families recorded in March) translating to about 1.1 million additional families in the Philippines who felt poor in the second quarter of 2026, and, c) only 18% of Filipino families categorized themselves as "not poor," while the majority, or 42%, could not say whether they were poor or not.”

Not only were there more Filipino families that rated themselves poor, the same OCTA survey found that “a) more Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger during the same period with about 21%, or nearly 5.6 million families who reported having had experienced hunger in the past three months without having anything to eat, b) this  second-quarter figure is higher than the 17%, or 4.5 million families, recorded in March, c) about 87% of those who rated themselves as hungry said they experienced it only once or a few times, d) hunger was most prevalent in Balance Luzon, at 27%, d) most of those affected, or 35%, belonged to Class E, or households with extremely low incomes, followed by 20% who were in Class D, or lower-middle- or working-class segments.”

With or without surveys or statistics conducted and collected, where we are, in our midst, and all throughout our land, the poor, hungry Filipinos are legion, ever-present, increasing in numbers, struggling to survive each day.