6.5 million Filipinos were not lifted out of poverty

What it claimed was that 6.5 million Filipinos moved from below to above the very artificial poverty threshold it had invented years ago. It has not established that 6.5 million Filipinos ceased being poor, in the ordinary meaning of that word. At best, the number of our poor remained unchanged and probably even worsened since this corruption-riddled administration came to power.

As usual, the extremely pro-administration Philippine Star and Philippine Daily Inquirer made it their banner headlines, with the former’s “6.5 million Filipinos lifted out of poverty” and the latter’s “PSA: PH poverty hit lowest single-digit level in 2025.” To the credit of The Manila Times editors, they demonstrated editorial maturity by putting the story in the inside pages, in the Business section. The paper also titled the piece, “Poverty rate hits record low of 9.7 percent.” Not “6.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty.”

These headline formulations border on fake news: 6.5 million Filipinos were not lifted out of poverty. The Inquirer even bolstered its good-news-for-BBM, putting on top of its headline the blurb for Social Weather Stations’ founder Mahar Mangahas’ column titled, “Poverty fell slightly in 2026 Q2.” The truth is that the SWS self-rated poverty figures rose from 47 percent in 2023 to 49 percent in June 2026.

Indeed, neither PSA nor Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan can explain how that many Filipinos became non-poor in just two years. GDP growth rate had slowed down from 6.4 percent in 2023 to only 4.4 percent in 2025; no new industries or growth areas had emerged; BPOs had slowed down; and another, online gaming, had even been closed down.

Before we explain how the PSA pulled off such arithmetical alchemy, note that there are three other sources that give us a much more realistic picture of the extent of Philippine poverty.

First, the non-profit IBON research group, established in 1978, has estimated that roughly 70 million Filipinos, about 62 percent of the population, are poor, earning P22,000 a month (P733 daily) or less. At PSA’s P14,634 monthly threshold for five people, official poverty becomes exceptionally small. At an income level closer to P22,000, tens of millions who PSA classifies as non-poor remain within a broader category of poor Filipinos.

Second, one study that supports the idea that the PSA is grossly underestimating the extent of poverty in the country is the June 2026 Social Weather Stations report that 49 percent of their respondents see themselves as poor. Self-rated poverty of course is subjective and cannot simply be substituted for PSA’s income measure. But when the SWS figure is 49 percent and that of IBON 62 percent, while the PSA’s is just 9.7 percent, the discrepancy is just too large as to require a major explanation.

Third, the mandatory minimum wage exposes the same problem in a way that requires no statistical sophistication. There are at present 4.7 million minimum-wage workers, according to the labor department, earning P695 per day (or P139 per capita). With these 4.7 million minimum-wage workers being really part of our poor, how can the PSA claim that 6.4 million Filipinos “escaped from poverty” from 2023 to 2025? Only if these minimum wage workers are classified as earning more than its poverty threshold of P96 daily per capita — an arithmetical alchemy that doesn’t correspond to reality.

The persistence of millions of minimum-wage workers therefore provides a useful reality check on the supposed poverty miracle. The country has not undergone a labor-market transformation in which millions of workers suddenly moved into well-paid, economically secure employment. The statutory wage floor still describes the earnings of millions, while many more workers in the informal economy live under similarly precarious conditions.

The PSA income-decile data — the population placed in 10 categories of income — show us how this delusion was created.

Threshold

The PSA’s poverty threshold per capita — the amount of a family’s total income for a family of five — only slightly rose from 2023 to 2025, from P91 to P96 daily per capita. The average (mean) income of the poorest 10 percent of the population in 2025 was P85 daily, and that of the second decile was P123. That means that while the poorest decile members all fell below the P96 threshold, most probably half of the second decile were no longer classified since the average income for that decile was P123 — above the poverty line of P93.

A decile is 10 percent of the population, or 11.64 million. Half of the second decile — 5.8 million — could account for much of the 6.5 million the PSA claimed “escaped from poverty.” The reality, though, is that an increase in a worker’s income from P85 daily to P124 per capita, or just above the poverty line, does not at all mean any significant change in his family’s condition. This adds up to roughly 17.4 million (11.6 plus 5.8) poor Filipinos, or 15 percent — nearly double the 6.4 percent that PSA claims is the percentage of our people who are poor.

The PSA and Balisacan paint an extravagant interpretation placed on the poverty figures. A Filipino whose income increases from a desperately inadequate level to a somewhat less inadequate level has not become better off. He has not necessarily miraculously “escaped poverty” with the first centavo increase of income over P96.2.

PSA’s poverty threshold is not necessarily improperly calculated for what it was designed to measure: minimum basic needs. The problem arises when this extremely low subsistence threshold is treated as the dividing line between Filipinos who are “poor” and those who are “non-poor.” In 2025, that dividing line was equivalent to only P96 per Filipino per day.

Ateneo de Manila University economist Leonardo Lanzona was quoted in media as saying: “The issue [is] that PSA’s own chief statistician already admitted, back in 2024, that the food budget behind this threshold was too low to meet basic nutrition. PSA promised to fix it — but as of late 2025, that fix was still awaiting approval and hadn’t been applied yet.”

“In other words, the poverty rate looks good right now for two reasons that have nothing to do with today’s economy: It reflects last year’s conditions and it’s measured against a bar that was already considered too low even before this year’s price shocks even started,” Lanzona said.

Economic Planning Secretary Balisacan was quoted as commenting on the PSA’s press release: “Reaching this milestone ahead of schedule demonstrates that expanding economic opportunities, complemented by effective social protection, can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”

This guy should be placed in a mental institution and stripped of his PhD.

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6.5 million Filipinos were not lifted out of poverty
Source: Breaking News PH