50% of Filipino families feel poor, SWS poll shows

By Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio, Reporter

HALF of Filipino families said they were living in poverty, with 1.6 million families considering themselves as “newly poor,” according to a Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll.

The number of self-rated poor families rose by 500,000 to 14.2 million in September, accounting for 50% of all households, SWS said in a statement on Thursday. In June, 49% of Filipinos viewed themselves poor.

The rise in self-rated poverty was driven by increases in Metro Manila and the rest of Luzon, the pollster said. Families who considered themselves poor were highest in Mindanao at 69%, followed by the Visayas (54%), Metro Manila (43%) and the rest of Luzon (42%).

“Many Filipinos feel poorer not only because of rising prices but because their hard work no longer translates into stability,” Ederson DT. Tapia, a political science professor at the University of Makati, said in a Viber message. “Inflation, debt and job insecurity have eroded purchasing power, turning economic growth into an abstraction rather than a shared reality.”

The Marcos administration has anchored its policy agenda on economic revival, food security and industrial growth, but faces mixed signals on the ground.

Unemployment eased to 3.9% in August, down from the three-year high 2.59 million jobless in July, while inflation — once peaking at 6% in 2023 — cooled to 1.7% in September. Economic growth inched up to 5.5% in the second quarter, but remained below expectations.

“This current report nominally clashes with recent Philippine Statistics Authority figures suggesting lower inflation rates,” Hansley A. Juliano, a political science lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University, said in a Facebook Messenger chat, noting that despite lower figures, families feel the cost of living remains high.

“Even if inflation has gone down this month, and wages have increased, the current interventions may not yet have a significant and tangible effect on peoples’ purchasing power,” he added.

About 12% of Filipinos considered themselves borderline in poverty, while 38% rated themselves as not poor, the SWS said.

Public confidence in the country’s political situation, including a widening multibillion-peso scandal involving flood control projects, may have influenced the survey findings too, Mr. Juliano said.

“Corruption scandals further drive home to the public our economic inequality situation, which may be very difficult to swallow for our public,” he said.

SWS survey data showed that the average monthly family expenses in September were about P3,000 for rent, P2,000 for transportation, P900 for internet and P360 for phone load.

“Compared with June 2025, the median monthly family expenses stayed unchanged… [except] for internet from P800 and mobile phone load from P300,” it said.

A family of five in the Philippines needs about P20,000 a month to cover basic food and nonfood expenses, the economic planning department told a House of Representatives budget hearing in September, raising the poverty threshold to P668 per day from P517.

The national average for self-rated poverty threshold has held at P12,000 since June, with the poverty gap remaining the same at P5,000, survey data showed.

“The threshold, or the minimum monthly budget self-rated poor families say they need for home expenses in order not to consider themselves poor, has remained sluggish for several years despite considerable inflation,” the SWS said. “This indicates that poor families have been lowering their living standards.”

In the survey, the number of self-rated food-poor families held steady at 41% or about 11.5 million, unchanged since April 2025.

The economic planning department in September also raised the food poverty benchmark, setting it at about P12,000 per month for a family of five, or P422 daily to meet basic nutritional needs.

The SWS interviewed 1,500 adults for the Sept. 24-30 poll, which had an error margin of ±3% points.