FOUR out of 10 Filipinos are optimistic the quality of their lives will improve in the next 12 months while nearly the same number said it will remain the same, the June 26 to 29 survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed.
The survey, which involved 1,500 adult respondents with a margin of error of ±2.5 percent, showed that 46 percent are optimistic or expect their lives to improve (up from 44 percent in April) while 4 percent are pessimistic or said it will not improve (unchanged).
Forty percent expect their lives to remain the same in the next 12 months (statistically unchanged from +39 in April) and 11 percent did not give an answer (down from 13 percent).
This resulted in a net personal optimism score of +42 (percent of optimists minus percent of pessimists) up from +39 in April.
SWS attributed the change in net personal optimism score to the increases in Mindanao (+39 from +35), Luzon (+50 from +47) and Visayas (+27 from +25), combined with the unchanged net rating in Metro Manila (+43).
The polling form also found that the net optimism was at +42 for those who claimed they are poor or food poor.
By locale, more people from the urban areas (53 percent) than the rural area (47 percent) expect their lives to improve in the next 12 months while by gender, 50 percent each of the male and female population expect their lives to improve.
By age group, net optimism was highest among people belonging to the 55 years old and above (31 percent), followed by the 35 to 44 years old (22 percent), 25 to 34 years old (18 percent), 45 to 54 years old (17 percent) and 18-24 (11 percent).
By education, net optimism was highest among those who finished junior high school or had some vocational schooling (31 percent), followed by those who finished elementary or had some high school education (28 percent), those who either had some senior high school, finished senior high school, completed vocational school (19ercent), had at most some elementary education (12 percent) and those who either graduated from college or took post-graduate studies (11 percent).
The survey question on the respondents’ prediction of their quality-of-life change over the next 12 months has been fielded 145 times since April 1984.
Out of the 145 surveys, the Net Personal Optimism score was negative only 11 times, reaching a historic low of negative-19 in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
It has since trended back upwards but still has not reached pre-pandemic levels. — With Paul Icamina
