Poverty as defined by the poor

August 26, 2024

MANILA – The current controversy over the official poverty line is due to social critics’ intense disagreement of where to draw the line. The government has an official opinion, presumably based on official criteria. All are entitled to their opinions, but it seems not many are publicly supporting the official side.

How can disagreements be resolved? Is there a social consensus on where to draw the line? How about this multiple-choice probe: a. “The official poverty line is probably too high,” b. “The official poverty line is probably too low,” c. “The official poverty line is probably correct,” and d. “I don’t know enough about the official poverty line to be able to choose.” [Avoid sequence bias by writing the options on cards, shuffle the cards, and lay them out to choose from.]The above probe is not for Social Weather Stations (SWS) to do, because we already have our own way of monitoring poverty, which is more rapid and more frequent, than the official way. As I wrote in “Poor, Borderline, Not Poor” (7/20/24), Filipino families are able to identify with one of these three groups, when shown the words “Poor” and “Not Poor” separated by a line. Last June, the proportions of the three groups were 58, 12, and 30 percent respectively (see “Second Quarter 2024 Social Weather Survey: 58% of Filipino families feel Poor, up from 46% in March 2024,” www.sws.org.ph, 7/18/24).

SWS identifies the Poor first; then it asks their need for home expenses. SWS does not define the poor by means of a line. Rather, first it lets the Poor identify themselves, and then it asks those feeling Poor how much they need for monthly family home expenses, in order not to feel that way; this gives the Poverty Threshold for the