Based on the Preliminary Results of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) in 2021, poverty incidence among population, defined as the proportion of Filipinos whose per capita income cannot sufficiently meet the individual basic food and non-food needs, was recorded at 18.1 percent. This translates to around 19.99 million Filipinos who lived below the poverty threshold of about PhP 12,030 per month for a family of five. The subsistence incidence, defined as the proportion of Filipinos whose income is not enough to meet even just the basic food needs, slightly increased to 5.9 percent in 2021. It was estimated that a family of five needs at least PhP 8,379 per month to meet their basic food requirements (Figure 1, and Tables 2 and 4).
Among families, around 3.50 million families or 13.2 percent were considered poor in 2021. On the other hand, the subsistence incidence among families was observed at 3.9 percent, which is equivalent to 1.04 million poor families below the food poverty line. (Tables 1, 3, 5 and 7)
CLAIRE DENNIS S. MAPA, Ph.D
Undersecretary
National Statistician and Civil Registrar General
