Poverty incidence in the Philippines eased in the first semester of 2018, with some 5mn Filipinos rising out of poverty, results of the Family and Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
In a press briefing yesterday, Deputy National Statistician Josie Perez said poverty incidence, or the proportion of the population whose incomes fell below the poverty threshold, declined to 21% from 27.6% in the first semester of 2018.
This means that 21 out of 100 Filipinos belonged to poor families whose incomes were below the amount needed to buy their basic food and non-food needs, a reduction from about 28 out of 100 Filipino in poverty in the same period in 2015.
“This means that about 23.1mn Filipinos (from 28.8mn in 2015) had incomes that fall below the poverty threshold in the first semester of 2018,” said Perez. Poverty incidence among families on the other hand, or the proportion of families whose incomes fell below the poverty line, was estimated at 16.1% from 22.2% in the first half of 2015.
This means that 16 out of 100 families had incomes below the amount needed to buy their basic food and non-food needs in the first food and non-food needs, a reduction from about 28 out of 100 Filipino in poverty in the same period in 2015.
“This means that about 23.1mn Filipinos (from 28.8mn in 2015) had incomes that fall below the poverty threshold in the first semester of 2018,” said Perez. Poverty incidence among families on the other hand, or the proportion of families whose incomes fell below the poverty line, was estimated at 16.1% from 22.2% in the first half of 2015.
This means that 16 out of 100 families had incomes below the amount needed to buy their basic food and non-food needs in the first semester of 2018. This translated to about 4mn families, down from the 5mn recorded in 2015.
Regions with the lowest poverty incidence among families were the National Capital Region, Calabarzon and Central Luzon, while the Muslim autonomous region had the highest poverty incidence.
The PSA said that during the period, a family of five needed no less than P7,337, on average, to meet the family’s basic food needs for a month. The amount is the food threshold, which increased by 11.2% compared with P6,600 in the first half of 2015.
No less than P10,481, on average, was needed to meet both basic food and non-food needs of a family of five in a month. This amount is the poverty threshold, which also went up by 11% from P9,453 three years prior. The PSA reported that the subsistence incidence among Filipino families, or the proportion of Filipino families whose incomes fell below the food threshold, was estimated at 6.2%, down from 9.9% in 2015.
The subsistence incidence among Filipino individuals, or the proportion of Filipinos whose incomes fell below the food threshold, went down to 8.5% from  13%. The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) attributed the decline to the sustained economic growth and critical and broad-based reforms and investments that have translated to employment generation and social protection.
“For one, growth in the construction and manufacturing sectors created more employment opportunities for Filipinos. Second, we like to highlight the increase in income of Filipino households, as well as employment shifts to the industry and service sectors from agriculture,” said Undersecretary Adoracion Navarro, NEDA officer-in-charge.