AROUND three million Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger during the last quarter of 2022, the December 10 to 14 survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed.
The survey, which involved 1,200 respondents nationwide with a margin of error of ±2.5 percent, showed that 11.8 percent of Filipino families (estimated three million) went hungry at least once in the last three months before the poll was taken due to lack of food to eat.
This was 0.5 points higher than the 11.3 percent (estimated 2.89 million families) that went hungry in October 2022 and 0.2 higher than the 11.6 percent (estimated 2.95 million families) that experienced hunger last June at the start of the Marcos government.
SWS defines involuntary hunger as “being hungry and not having food to eat” during the quarter.
The survey firm found that hunger was experienced most in Mindanao at 12.7 percent or an estimated 738,000 families, followed by the Visayas with 12 percent (576,000 families), Metro Manila with 11.7 percent (399,999 families) and Luzon with 11.3 percent (1.1 million families).
