Palace not surprised majority of Filipinos say quality of life worsened

December 23, 2020

Malacanang said on Wednesday that it is not surprising that majority of the Filipinos believed that their quality of life got worse in the last 12 months.

"Year 2020 has been a challenging year for the Philippines with lockdowns adversely affecting the socioeconomic condition of our people. It is therefore not surprising that the Fourth Quarter Survey of the Social Weather stations (SWS), conducted last November 21-25, 2020, showed 62% of Filipinos believe that their quality of life got worse in the last twelve months," Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.

But he expressed optimism that life will improve as the economy has reopened.

"Things are looking up. The economy has reopened which means more livelihood opportunities have become available," he said.

Roque said the improvement is being felt now since the 62 percent in November was better than the 82 percent last September.

He also cited taht latest SWS survey indicated that hunger among Filipino families has eased to 16 percent from a record-high of 30.7 percent.

The spokesman also noted that as per October 2020 Labor Force Survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority, unemployment rate eased to 8.7 percent in October from a high of 17.7 percent last April.

"Ingat buhay para sa hanapbuhay will continue to be our direction in 2021 with the opening of more industries to revitalize our economy and stimulate growth for the betterment of the lives of our people next year and beyond," he said.

The latest SWS survey found that 62 percent of adult Filipinos have said that their quality of life got worse, 24 percent said it was the same, and 14 percent, sayd they got better.

According to SWS, the November net gainer score was up by 28 points from the catastrophic -76 in September, softening its worst survey trend that started during the COVID-19 crisis when net gainers fell to catastrophic levels of -78 in May and -72 in July. Celerina Monte/DMS