Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13) — Over four million families in the country experienced hunger at least once in the past three months, according to a recent poll released by the Social Weather Stations.
The national Social Weather Survey found that 16.8%, or an estimated 4.2 million families, experienced involuntary hunger during that period.
The pollster defined involuntary hunger as hunger because there was not enough to eat. It added current figures were slightly higher than the last poll results in November 2020.
“The May 2021 hunger rate is 0.8 points above the 16.0% (estimated 4.0 families) in November 2020. It is 4.3 points below the 2020 annual average of 21.1% but still double the December 2019 pre-pandemic level of 8.8% (est. 2.1 million families),” SWS said on Monday.
The highest incidence of hunger was seen in Mindanao, estimated at 1.2 million families. The Visayas comes second (around 776,000 families), Balance Luzon — referring to areas in Luzon outside of Metro Manila — (around 1.8 million families), and Metro Manila (around 496,000 families).
From November 2020 to May 2021, SWS said overall hunger rose among those who rated themselves as poor, from 21.7% to 23.5%.
“Hunger among the Self-Rated Food-Poor is always higher than hunger among the Self-Rated Poor at any one point in time,” said the pollster.
READ: SWS: Number of Filipino families that consider themselves poor’ drop to new record low
The First Quarter 2021 Social Weather Survey was conducted from April 28 to May 2, 2021, with interviews from 1,200 adults nationwide.
