Fewer Pinoys felt their lives improved – SWS survey

MANILA, Philippines - Fewer Filipinos felt their lives have improved in the past year, a latest survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) revealed.

The SWS poll, taken from June 5 to 8, found 28 percent of 1,200 respondents claiming that their lives had improved in the past 12 months, down from 32 percent in March.

On the other hand, those who said their lives worsened stayed at 26 percent in June based on the findings of the SWS second quarter survey, results of which were published in the newspaper BusinessWorld yesterday.

Meanwhile, the same survey also showed that more Filipinos remain hopeful that their lives and the economy would get better in the next 12 months.

In terms of net personal optimism, the survey found 42 percent of respondents (flat from March) expected their quality of life to improve in the next 12 months and six percent (from five percent in March) expected it to get worse, yielding a net personal optimism score of 36 (from 37 in March).

SWS registered a five-point increase in the net personal optimism in Mindanao (at 40) and a one-point increase in the Visayas (at 29). The improvements in the two areas matched the three-point declines each in Metro Manila (at 36) and balance Luzon (at 37), the pollster said.

Compared to March, the net personal optimism stayed “very high” across all socio-economic classes, with the biggest improvement of 11 points recorded among respondents belonging to class E (39), it said.

The increase in the net personal optimism among class E offset the three- and four-point drops among those in D (35) and ABC (37), respectively, the SWS added.?The survey also found that 31 percent (from 27 percent in March) expected the general economy to get better over the following year and 15 percent (from 20 percent) felt it would deteriorate, yielding a net optimism score of 15, up from six in March.?“In the case of net optimism about the economy, the most common answers, historically speaking, have been highly negative,” the SWS noted.

SWS attributed the nine-point gain in the national net optimism about the economy to increases of 15 points in balance Luzon (to 17 in June), 14 points in Mindanao (to 19) and one point in the Visayas (to 14) that offset a seven-point fall in Metro Manila (to 7).?Among classes, net optimism about the economy rose by 12 points to 21 in June from nine in March for E respondents. It also rose by nine points to 15 from six in class D, and to nine from -2 among those in ABC.

SWS’s net personal optimism scale classifies scores of 30 and above as “very high”; those of 20 to 29 as “high”; the range of 10 to 19 that contains the historical median and mode – or what is normally expected – as “fair”; 1 to 9 as “mediocre” since any score within this range is below the median or what is normally expected; 0 to -9 as “low”; and those -10 and below as “very low.”

For net optimism about the economy, SWS classifies scores of -30 and below as “very low,” -20 to -29 as “low,” and -10 to -19 as “mediocre.”