By Ding I. Generoso
IN the 1940s, a radio program in the United States offered contestants picked from the audience a chance to win 64 dollars by correctly answering seven questions that increased in difficulty at each turn. The first question was worth one dollar, and the prize doubled for every correct answer until the seventh and final question worth 64 dollars.
The final question came to be known as the “64-dollar-question” so that by 1947, the program–originally titled “Take It or Leave It” – changed its name to “The $64 Question.”
Over time, the phrase “64-dollar question” became an idiom to mean “a crucial or problematic question or issue on which a lot depends.”
Thanks to the Philippine Statistics Authority and the National Economic Development Authority, 64–although in pesos, not in dollars–has become just that or, as the late Sen. Blas Ople preferred to put it, a “conundrum” of sorts, a number worthy of debate.
The “64-peso question” by our reckoning, of course, refers to the amount of money that NEDA and PSA say a Filipino needs to be able to eat three square meals a day. NEDA and the PSA say that if you have 64 pesos for your daily meals, you are not food-poor. They call it the food poverty threshold.
Put another way, what they mean is, at least, you won’t go hungry for a day. But–as NEDA also pointed out–it doesn’t mean you’re eating right, nor that you have enough calories to make you last the day or perform your work, much less the nutrients to make you healthy and well.
And there lies the 64-peso, I mean, 64-dollar question.
The PSA admits that its methodology, whatever that is, deserves review because the threshold was “insufficient to meet nutritional or dietary requirements.”
But NEDA insists that the threshold was only meant “to measure and monitor the trend of poverty over the years… to assess the country’s development progress and to measure the effectiveness of the government’s policies and programs in addressing poverty.”
“We want to find out whether the programs, the strategies, the policies are making a dent on poverty, whatever the standard that we set up from the very beginning,” said NEDA chief Arnesio Balisacan.
But, of course, if the standard is so low, whatever the government does will make a dent in poverty, and then it can declare–as it has always done regardless of who is sitting in Malacanang–that it is beating poverty.
Ask the Bureau of Corrections and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology. Their standard for prisoners and inmates is even better than that of NEDA and PSA.
The food subsistence allowance for those in prisons and detention facilities is 70 pesos per head. That’s six pesos higher than NEDA’s threshold for 30 million or so Filipinos who are not deprived of liberty.
But unlike their counterparts in NEDA and PSA, BuCor and BJMP officials are not happy with their 70 pesos food allowance per head.
Last year, in fact, they asked Congress to raise the budget to 100 pesos, which was denied.
This year, they again propose raising it to 100 pesos for their 2025 budget, a move supported by the Commission on Human Rights.
There is even a pending bill filed by Rep. Rufus B. Rodriguez in the House of Representatives seeking the same.
But why can’t NEDA and PSA raise their food-poverty threshold even just to the level that the Food and Nutrition Research Institute considers necessary to meet calorie requirements, which was 88 pesos in 2016?
Well, because their concern is only making the poverty statistics look good regardless of what is true and real.
Maybe those NEDA and PSA geniuses ought to be put in jail even just for seven days so they can have a taste of breakfast, lunch and supper for 64 pesos.
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Conrado I. Generoso is a seasoned expert in media and communications, political campaigns and consulting, advocacy and public policy development. His experience in media spans four decades in various capacities as a reporter, editor and columnist, as well as public relations and advertising executive.
