The good news on hunger

The recent survey trend on hunger in the Philippines, like that on poverty (see “Poverty has dropped since 2014,” Opinion, 1/21/17), is quite favorable.  It is a good legacy of the previous administration, that the new regime should build upon.

The new SWS hunger report, posted last Tuesday, was: “Fourth Quarter 2016 Social Weather Survey: Hunger at 13.9% of families; Moderate Hunger 10.9%, Severe Hunger 3.0%.”

“Moderate” means involuntarily experiencing it once or a few times, while “severe” means experiencing it often or always, in the past three months. Every percentage point is 225,000 families, given the 22.5 million families in the nation.

Compared to the third quarter (Q3), hunger in the fourth quarter (Q4) rose by 3.3 points, of which 1.8 points was a rise in moderate hunger, and 1.5 points was a rise in severe hunger. However, the full story of the Q4 figures is its relation not only to Q3—when hunger was at a 13-year low of 10.6 percent—but to the entire series of SWS hunger surveys, now numbering 76 nationwide rounds from 1998 to 2016.

Averaging all four quarters, hunger in 2016 was 13.3 percent of families, or slightly below the 13.4 percent in 2015.  This is very good news, since 2015 had the lowest hunger percentage in the past 11 years, ever since the 11.8 of 2004.

Hunger reached a hump in 2012.  In the first six years of the survey series, from 1998 to 2003, the average hunger percentage was as low as 7.0, and never rose above 11.4.  Thus the present state of hunger has not yet recovered to that in the first years of hunger monitoring.

Unfortunately, starting in 2004, the hunger percentage grew steadily each year, for several years.  It peaked at 19.9 in 2012 before subsiding to 19.5 in 2013 and 18.4 in 2014 (see “Is hunger getting over the hump?”, Opinion, 1/31/14).  We can see now that the big recovery of 2015 was sustained into 2016; therefore it was not a fluke. But there is still quite a way to go before the single-digit hunger of the early 2000s is reattained.

Severe hunger has been very low in the past two years. The average proportion of families in severe hunger, in particular, was only 2.2 percent in 2015 and 2.1 percent in 2016.  These are the two lowest levels of severe hunger in the entire 1998-2016 series, with the sole exception of a 1.5 percent in 2003.

In 2016Q4, the lowest hunger was in Mindanao.  In the last quarter’s survey, 10.0 percent of families suffered hunger in Mindanao, versus 13.0 percent in the National Capital Region, 15.0 percent in the Balance of Luzon, and 16.7 percent in the Visayas.

The Mindanao figure consisted of 9.7 percent moderate, and 0.3 percent severe, hunger—the 0.3 is the record-lowest quarterly rate of severe hunger of any area since the surveys started in 1998.

Inflation control is what matters.  The single most important statistical determinant of both hunger and poverty is the cost of living faced by the poor. This is the finding of Dr. Dennis Mapa, dean of the University of the Philippines Diliman School of Statistics, who has analyzed the SWS surveys for many years.

The recent good performance in poverty and hunger reduction is, I believe, due to the minimal, below 2 percent, annual inflation rates in 2014 and 2015. Thus, I strongly advocate a very low target for inflation. Even 3 percent is hazardous.

In contrast, growth in the aggregate economy, in terms of the Gross National (or else Domestic) Product, has almost no statistical relation to hunger and poverty.  It’s mainly the business sector that benefits from GNP/GDP growth.

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