Margie Markland

The Philippines’ poverty rate declined to 15.5% in 2023 as the average income of a Filipino increased, according to the latest data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Photo Courtesy of Alexander Conrady/REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco.

The latest figure is 2.6% lower from the previous record of 18.1% in 2021.

Results from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) released by the PSA found that the number of poor Filipinos last year stood at 17.54 million, lower than the 19.99 million poor individuals in its previous survey.

Poverty incidence among families also dropped to 10.9%, equivalent to 2.99 million poor families from 3.5 million families two years earlier.

For 2023, the poverty threshold was set at a national average of P13,873 per month, lower than the poverty ceiling of P11,998 in 2021.

This means that to be considered poor, a family's monthly income should fall below the threshold.

The country’s average income per capita also increased by 17.9% between 2021 and 2023, outpacing the 15.3% rise in the annual per capita poverty threshold during the same period.

“If food inflation had been lower, of course the reduction in poverty could be much, much bigger,” PSA Undersecretary and National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa told a news conference on August 15.

Mapa explained that the poverty statistics were determined using the average retail price of food from January to December 2023 and the 2023 FIES conducted from July 8 to 31, 2023 and January 8 to 31, 2024 in a sample size of over 160,000 families nationwide.

The release is one year earlier than its scheduled release of two years after the reference year based on Designated Statistics.