The First Semester 2021 poverty incidence among population, or the proportion of poor Filipinos whose per capita income is not sufficient to meet their basic food and non-food needs, was estimated at 23.7 percent.
This translates to 26.14 million Filipinos who lived below the poverty threshold estimated at PhP 12,082, on the average, for a family of five per month in the first semester of 2021.
On the other hand, subsistence incidence among Filipinos, or the proportion of Filipinos whose income is not enough to meet even the basic food needs, was registered at 9.9 percent or about 10.94 million Filipinos in the first semester of 2021.
On the average, the monthly food threshold for a family of five for the same period was estimated at PhP 8,393.
Among families, the First Semester 2021 poverty incidence was estimated at 18.0 percent, which is equivalent to around 4.74 million poor families. Meanwhile, the subsistence incidence among families was recorded at 7.1 percent or around 1.87 million food-poor families in the first semester of 2021.
Meanwhile, the national Social Weather Survey of September 12-16, 2021, found adult joblessness at 24.8% of the adult labor force.
This is 2.8 points below the 27.6% in June 2021. It is 12.6 points below the record-high 37.4% average of 2020, but 5.0 points above the 19.8% average of 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Working children and child labor situation
The total population of children 5 to 17 years old was estimated at 31.17 million in 2020. This was higher than the total number of Filipino children 5 to 17 years of age registered in 2019 at 30.50 million.
Of the estimated 31.17 million children 5 to 17 years old in 2020, 872 thousand or 2.8 percent were working. This was lower than the proportion of working children 5 to 17 years old in 2019 estimated at 3.4 percent.
Working children was higher among boys compared to the girls. Of the 872 thousand working children in 2020, 582 thousand or 66.7 percent were boys while 291 thousand or 33.3 percent were girls. In 2019, 65.6 percent of the working children were boys while 34.4 percent were girls.
Children belonging to the older age groups (15 to 17 years) were more likely to work than the younger ones. Majority of the working children belonged to age group 15 to 17 years of age accounting for 68.9 percent of the total working children in 2020 and 67.4 percent in 2019.
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