Out of touch

Being out of touch is a dangerous thing, especially here in our nation of 117 million – and especially if you’re the government and you think you know how ordinary Filipinos live.

For many, the struggle is real – from making ends meet to the daily grind of commuting and the mental agony of not knowing how to survive until the next paycheck.

I say it’s dangerous because a government that is out of touch might actually believe it is doing right by its people, when in reality, it might be doing the opposite.

In a way, many of the presidents we’ve had became inevitably out of touch because it’s difficult to know what’s really happening outside the tightly guarded gates of the glittering Malacañang Palace with all the glitz and glamor and the curtain of power.

More than that, they are also almost always surrounded by a cabal of cronies, rent-seeking oligarchs and sycophants who, driven by vested interests, will just dish out what the president wants to hear to get on his or her good side.

‘Lifted out of poverty’

This is apparently what’s happening now when the Marcos administration trumpets that 6.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty.

Says the Philippine Statistics Authority, as reported by our macroeconomic reporter Louella Desiderio:

An estimated 6.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty between 2023 and 2025 as the poverty incidence fell to its lowest rate last year.

The 2025 Full-Year Poverty Statistics released by the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that poverty incidence declined to 9.7 percent last year from 15.5 percent in 2023 and 18.1 percent in 2021.

Last year’s poverty incidence, the lowest ever, showed the country achieving the single-digit poverty target under the Philippine Development Plan three years ahead of schedule.

In terms of magnitude, the number of Filipinos considered poor or living below the poverty threshold declined to 11.08 million last year from 17.54 million in 2023.

“For the first time, fewer than one in 10 Filipinos is living below the poverty line,” Department of Economy, Planning and Development Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said.

“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,” he added.

The poverty rate declined as sustained economic growth, easing inflation and favorable labor market conditions led to more economic opportunities from 2023 to 2025, the government also said.

Understated poverty

But the government is trumpeting a development that is based on outdated standards.

The non-government IBON, reacting to the latest PSA report, underscored that the official methodology understates poverty because its food threshold is based on a bare-minimum, least-cost basket while non-food needs are not directly and adequately costed.

The 2025 annual per-capita poverty threshold is only P35,121, or P96.22 per person per day, it said.

“For a family of five, this amounts to just P14,634 a month. This means a family earning even slightly more than this is officially considered non-poor, without considering the high costs of food, housing, electricity, transportation, education, health care and other basic expenses,” IBON said.

The gap becomes clearer when measured against what families actually need for a decent life.

IBON estimates put the family living wage (FLW) at P1,277 per day for a family of five and P1,533 for a family of six, as of July 2026. Yet the Philippine average minimum wage is only P512 per day. Thus, the average minimum wage covers only around 40 percent of the FLW for a family of five and just a third for a family of six. Millions of workers are still unable to afford a decent standard of living.

These numbers are even conservative.

But the real benchmark should not be just barely above a statistical line but should be so much more than that.

The government must create the conditions for sustained and broad-based improvements in living standards by strengthening the domestic economy and developing engines of growth that generate stable, decent-paying jobs, IBON said.

Against this backdrop, when the government trumpets the latest numbers as a milestone, it shows an out-of-touch assessment of our current economic and living conditions.

Or perhaps it is desperate to report one “milestone” after another because in reality, Filipinos don’t have a lot to cheer about these days, except perhaps Alex Eala’s victories.

Just last month, the government also considered it a major milestone that the Philippines is now an upper-middle income country when in fact, we had simply crossed a statistical threshold.

Lessons

But one can understand President Marcos and his economic team for desperately wanting to pop the champagne. Businessmen, foreign investors and rating agencies have been waiting for economic conditions to improve.

And yet, the only thing that’s moving up here is the level of toxic politics.

Nonetheless, the government can finally update its outdated metrics so that the next time it releases poverty statistics, it can capture a more accurate picture of reality.

As I said, being out of touch is dangerous.

It misses the point that Filipinos continue to grapple with the rising cost of food and transport, inflationary pressures, lack of jobs and the uncertainty of it all.

The Marcos administration still has two years left to make an impact. But first, it must be in touch with reality.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.