The word “breadline” is sometimes used in English to mean the poverty threshold. It is a number that determines whether a person is poor in the traditional economic sense: If one does not earn an income surpassing this digit, they are then considered poor. Governments employ different means of determining their local breadlines, but possibly the most common is by approximating how much income is needed to purchase the necessities of life, which include, of course, food such as bread.
According to recent poverty statistics—updated and published by the Philippine Statistics Authority—the breadline for a family of five Filipinos in 2021 was P12,082 per month. Previously, the sum for a family of five in 2018 was P10,532 per month. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the Philippine poverty incidence among families followed and increased from 16.2 percent to 18.0 percent as well. In short, income-based poverty has gone up.
Anecdotally, those escalations may not sound like a lot. For instance, if asked how much of the Filipino population is poor, people who feel and witness the realities of poverty daily may guesstimate higher poverty rates, such as 50 percent to 70 percent or more. This might be because they are using different, subjective, or alternative definitions and ideas of poverty to define what it means to be poor, which are not necessarily wrong ways of looking at things.
In fact, it is healthy to be skeptical and critical of any statistic that declares poverty, especially for a large population like that of the Philippines. Even the official breadline only tells us how much it is assumed people need to eke out a generally bare and basic minimum existence. What is important to nuance when discussing how many are considered poor is the prevalence of different kinds of poverty in our midst, as the experience of poverty goes beyond just not having money.
Further parsing puts government data into perspective and translates them into numbers we can scale more easily. What this shows is that the Philippines went from 4.04 million poor families back then to 4.74 million poor families now. Among individuals, the figure of 22.26 million poor people in 2018 grew to 26.14 million poor people in 2021. With a total population of over 100 million Filipinos—indeed closer to 110 million—that is one impoverished Pinoy out of every four or five!
In contemporary development studies, definitions and dimensions of poverty can and do include more than those who simply do not have enough money to get by. People who are not in good health are poor, as are those with no means to achieve their dreams, those who are not free to exercise their rights, and those who are excluded from partaking in society. When one contemplates poverty by considering factors such as these, they certainly are not wrong.
All the aforementioned are related aspects of that horrible thing called poverty, which is, in a broader sense, a lack or deprivation. Such deprivation may still be present even if the majority is technically beating the breadline. There is truth to the idea that if a person does not have enough material wealth, he would experience other kinds of poverty, too. However, only gauging what poverty is on the level of basic needs and income is not enough to address the woes of the poor.
The ability to pursue a life worth living through economic empowerment is one sustainable antidote to poverty. Once people can more freely choose and follow what they truly desire and aspire for in life, they can find more ways to uplift themselves. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done, for such empowerment requires an enabling environment that safeguards the wellness, rights, and capabilities of individuals. This, in turn, would allow flourishing and growth.
Regardless of how poverty is perceived, whether it is through a lack in income, health and well-being, the pursuit of freedom and happiness, or any other metric, we could probably agree that poverty is still prevalent. There has been much suffering due to the ravages of typhoons and disasters of late, on top of the continued difficulties faced by many people and businesses due to lockdown policies in the wake of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Perhaps, those running for office in the upcoming 2022 elections—an event creeping ever closer—would be up to the task of elaborating on how they would define and address poverty, for the consideration of the voting populace. These past years have caused a setback to the hardworking Filipinos striving to lift themselves out of being poor. Carving out a prosperous path for a stable and economically freer Philippines, among other goals, would be a very welcome thing.
Mr. Harald Eustachius A. Tomintz teaches at the Department of Economics of the Ateneo de Manila University.