Lower official poverty estimates don’t mean less poor Filipinos — IBON
Lower official poverty estimates don’t mean less poor Filipinos — IBON
IBON.org
Research group IBON said lower reported official poverty estimates for the first semester of 2018 unfortunately do not necessarily mean that the country’s poverty situation is improving. The group observed that standard of living allowed by the official poverty line is very low and grossly underestimates the real number of poor Filipinos. Unless corrected, it gives a misleading picture of the conditions of millions of poor Filipinos and hinders the country’s anti-poverty efforts, IBON said.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported the proportion of supposedly poor Filipinos as falling to 21.0% in the first semester of 2018 or to just 23.1 million poor Filipinos. This is a seemingly marked improvement from the reported 27.6% poverty incidence and 28.8 million poor Filipinos in the same period in 2015. The proportion and number of poor families likewise also fell.
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