Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 3) — Three out of 10 Filipinos said their quality of life improved since last year, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey found.
The survey, conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 using face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults nationwide, revealed 30% said their quality of life got better, 29% said it worsened, and 41% said it was the same.
SWS dubbed those who said their lives got better as “Gainers,” those who said their lives worsened as “Losers,” and the rest as “Unchanged.”
The pollster said this resulted in a Net Gainer score of zero — computed by subtracting the percentage of losers from gainers and was classified as fair.
SWS said this was a slight increase from -2, the past net scores in both April and June this year, but still a long shot from December 2019’s level of +18.
“The Net Gainer score was generally negative until 2015 when it rose to positive numbers until the drastic deterioration beginning with the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns,” it said.
“It has since trended back upwards but still has not reached the positive range,” it added.
SWS said Net Gainers in the Visayas remained “mediocre” but noted it increased from -17 to -13 while it stayed high in Metro Manila (+9) and other parts of Luzon (+8).
For Mindanao, its net score went down by 4 points from -7 to -11.
The October 2022 survey indicated that 11.3% of Filipino families, or around 2.9 million, experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the last three months.
SWS’ third quarter data also showed 49% of families rated themselves as poor, 28% were borderline poor, and 21% were not poor.
The pollster said its sampling error margins are ±2.5% for national percentages, ±5.7% each for Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao, and ±4.0% for Balance Luzon.
