The highest poverty incidence in the Philippines has hit the country’s indigenous people, fisherfolk and farmers as shown in the 2023 data just released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
In a statement on Monday, the PSA said the three sectors saw poverty incidences of 32.4 percent, 27.4 percent and 27 percent, respectively, in 2003.
The PSA said this indicates that these sectors had the highest percentages of individuals belonging to families living below the official poverty threshold.
The PSA’s report covers 11 of the 14 basic sectors identified in Republic Act (RA) No. 8425 or the Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act.
RA No. 8425 also defines basic sectors as the disadvantaged or marginalized sectors of Philippine society.
According to the PSA, 11 of the 14 basic sectors have sectoral and income data from the merged files of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey and January round of the Labor Force Survey, which are the data sources for the computation of poverty statistics among the basic sectors.
The 11 basic sectors covered by the poverty statistics are women, youth, children, senior citizens, individuals residing in urban areas, formal labor and migrant workers, farmers, fisherfolk, self-employed and unpaid family workers which serve as a proxy indicator for workers in the informal sector, persons with disability and Indigenous Peoples.
A comparison of poverty incidences among the basic sectors from the comparable period of 2021 to 2023 reveals a decline across all sectors, the PSA said. This excludes the figure for Indigenous Peoples, since it is new in the list of basic sectors with estimates of poverty incidence.
Meanwhile, senior citizens, formal labor and migrant workers, and individuals residing in urban areas posted the lowest poverty incidences among the basic sectors in 2023 at 7.8 percent, 8.3 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively.
BOOSTING INCOMES
Sought for comment, Michael Ricafort, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. chief economist pointed out that one way to boost incomes in the agricultural sector, which includes fishery and farming, is the use of the best global practices in terms of increased mechanization and the use of the best available technologies worldwide to boost output while also reducing production costs.
“This could help boost incomes in the agricultural sector, making [that sector] profitable, boosting local supplies and leading to lower prices and overall inflation from the point of view of consumers, businesses and other institutions,” Ricafort said.
He added that education is the greatest equalizer, particularly through Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics courses.
The PSA report also said the sectors with the highest number of individuals belonging to poor families were children at 9.29 million and women at 8.66 million. These sectors, however, experienced the largest declines of individuals belonging to poor families from 2021 to 2023.
The number of poor women fell by 1.28 million, while the number of poor children decreased at 1.13 million.
Meanwhile, the sectors with the lowest number of individuals belonging to poor families in 2023 were persons aged 15 years and above with disabilities at 233,000; fisherfolk at 353,000; and senior citizens at 837,000.
FEWER POOR
In July 2024, the PSA reported that the percentage of Filipinos classified as “poor” declined in 2023 compared to two years ago.
The 2023 Full Year Official Poverty Statistics then showed that the poverty incidence among the population dropped to 15.5 percent from 18.1 percent in 2021.
This translates to a decrease of 2.45 million Filipinos living in poverty, to 17.54 million.
In terms of poverty incidence among families, the rate also fell to 10.9 percent in 2023 from 13.2 percent in 2021.
This corresponds to a drop in the number of impoverished families to 3 million in 2023 from 3.5 million in 2021.
Poverty incidence is the proportion of Filipino families with incomes that are not sufficient to buy their minimum basic food and non-food needs as estimated by the poverty threshold.
