In a press release by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Filipino families in the poverty threshold were analyzed through the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES).
Data was collected from the entirety of 2023, and among the registered families, 10.9 percent or 3 million families were on the poverty incidence. The PSA defines poverty incidence as the proportion of Filipino families with incomes that are not enough to sustain the minimum basic needs within a household.
Individually, they recorded that 17.5 million Filipinos were poor in 2023. In comparison to their 2021 data, there was a slight decrease in poverty among Filipino families in the previous year.
Families included in the poverty incidence in 2023 stood at 2.7 percent, which is equivalent to 740,000 families. The PSA noted that the numerical data collected can be likened to the country’s poverty situation before the pandemic. A small improvement with the current changes being imposed.
The collected data were based on various sources such as wages and salaries, entrepreneurial activities, and other sources of income received by each family.
The PSA also noted that the shift in the poverty threshold is mainly affected by the changes in the economic state, which resulted in poverty incidences decreasing by 2.3 percent in 2023.
