A recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed that 82% or four out of five adult Filipinos believe that the quality of life worsened in the past 12 months.
Below is the complete report of SWS published on their website.
The Social Weather Stations (SWS) September 17-20, 2020 National Mobile Phone Survey found 82% of adult Filipinos saying their quality-of-life got worse (termed by SWS as “Losers”), versus 11% saying it was the same (“Unchanged”), and only 6% saying it got better (“Gainers”), compared to a year ago.
The resulting Net Gainers score in September 2020 is -76 (% Gainers minus % Losers) which is considered by SWS as catastrophic (-50 and below).
The September 2020 score joins SWS’s worst trends in survey history, having recorded -78 in May and -72 in July during the Covid-19 crisis. The only other time the score reached catastrophic level was in June 2008 (-50), during rice and oil price hikes.
The survey question on quality-of-life trend in the past 12 months has been fielded 137 times since April 1983.
Net Gainers is catastrophic in all areas
The Net Gainers score stayed catastrophic in all areas: it is -80 in the Visayas, -76 in Metro Manila, -75 in Balance Luzon, and -74 in Mindanao.
Compared to July 2020 figures, all areas experienced a worsening in their Net Gainers scores: Mindanao experienced the biggest drop of 9 points; the Visayas, 5 points; Metro Manila, 4 points; and Balance Luzon, 1 point.
Net Gainers worse among non-college graduates
The September 2020 survey also found that Net Gainers is significantly worse among those who did not graduate from college.
Among college graduates, the score is -64. Meanwhile, among those with less education, the score ranges from -72 to -83. The score is worst among those who only finished up to some junior high school education.
Historically, college graduates have tallied better scores than those with less education
Net Gainers is just as low among those with a job as it is among the jobless
The Net Gainers score hardly varies by job status: it is -73 among those with a job, -77 among those who never had a job, and -79 among those who do not have a job at present but used to have one.
In September 2020, the SWS adult joblessness rate was at 39.5% (“SWS September 17-20, 2020 National Mobile Phone Survey – Report No. 5: Adult joblessness remains very high at 39.5%,” October 5, 2020, www.sws.org.ph).
SWS: Net Gainers worse among hungry families
Adults from families that were involuntarily hungry in the last 3 months had a higher Losers score than those that were not. As a result, the Net Gainers score was -84 among the hungry, compared to only -72 among the non-hungry.
Further, the score does not vary by the degree of hunger experienced; those who experienced severe (“often” and “always”) and moderate (“only once” and “a few times”) hunger both tallied a score of -84.
Hunger is greater among Losers
The September 2020 survey also found that the hunger rate is significantly greater among Losers than among Gainers and among the Unchanged.
Among Losers, 34% experienced involuntary hunger (24% moderate, 10% severe). Meanwhile, 23% of Gainers and 17% of the Unchanged went hungry. (The difference between the hunger rates among the Gainers and among the Unchanged is not statistically significant.)
The SWS hunger rate reached a new record-high 30.7% of families in September 2020 (“SWS September 17-20, 2020 National Mobile Phone Survey – Report No. 2: Hunger at new record-high 30.7% of families,” September 27, 2020, www.sws.org.ph)