Despite GNP growth, hunger among Filipinos worsening — SWS

MORE Filipino families are going hungry, according to the latest survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) which saw the proportion of those experiencing “involuntary hunger” reach a new record-high of 19 percent in November.

This means that an estimated 3.3 million households in the country went hungry at least once in the past three months, SWS reported.

This is the highest figure recorded since July 1998. SWS also noted that hunger has been at double-digit levels for the past 11 consecutive quarters, since June 2004.

The 2006 SWS surveys, which have hunger ranging from 13.9 percent to 19 percent in the past four quarters, indicate “the emptiness of gross national product (GNP) as an indicator of economic well-being,” observed SWS chair Mahar Mangahas in an analysis he wrote in November. (See related post.)

The third quarter national income accounts show the country’s GNP grew by 5.8 percent. In 2005, the GNP improved by 5.6 percent. (See percent-change in GNP from 1985 to 2005.)

“A great challenge to meaningful economic research is to determine why hunger actually worsened tremendously despite GNP growth of recent years,” Mangahas wrote.

Hunger in Metro Manila rose by five points, from 12.8 percent in September to 17.7 percent in November. It rose by three points in the rest of Luzon and by only one point in Mindanao. In the Visayas, hunger slightly declined from 19.7 percent to 19.0 percent.

SWS further reported that “moderate hunger,” defined as households experiencing it involuntarily “only once” or “a few times” in the last three months, reached a new record-high of 15.1 percent, surpassing the record of 12.9 percent in August 2005.

Meanwhile, the proportion of families who experienced “severe hunger” or those “often” or “always” hungry declined from 4.6 percent in September to 3.9 percent in November. “Severe hunger” figures however went up in Manila and Mindanao.

As for self-rated poverty, figures barely changed from 51 percent in September to 52 percent in November. It declined by 11 points in the Visayas while it rose by eight points in Metro Manila.

The median self-rated poverty threshold, or the average monthly budget that poor families say they need to escape poverty, also rose in Metro Manila, from P10,000 in the previous quarter to P12,000 in November.

SWS also noted that household heads’ report on self-rated poverty and hunger are consistent. In November, for example, the proportion of families experiencing hunger in the past three months is 30 percent among the self-rated poor, compared to only 13 percent among the “not-food” poor.

“As a concept, poverty allows for various degrees of deprivation. A rise in hunger while poverty is flat, over a period of time, implies a worsening of deprivation among families at the lower end of the poverty spectrum,” SWS said.

The fourth quarter survey was conducted from November 24 to 29 among 1,200 household heads.

Read the full results of the SWS survey.