The point is that half of the population is still poor

The headline of the national daily BusinessWorld could have been music to the ears of its target reader class: "Self-rated poverty nears record low." The latest SWS survey, to which the business paper has priority access, reported that 45% of families surveyed in the second quarter considered themselves poor. The last time this supposedly happened was in December 2011.

The number actually represents 10.5 million families according to the SWS. Multiplied by five, the results would suggest over 50 million Filipinos living in poverty. That doesn't sound much like good news, having a country half of whose population is considering itself poor. Which is saying a lot since according to BusinessWorld's own report, the poor tend to look at their situation optimistically by saying they're just "getting by" despite real conditions indicating otherwise.

Respondents in Metro Manila report the poverty threshold at P20,000 for each family. Assuming a family of five, that threshold is nowhere near a luxurious lifestyle.

So the real story is that half of the population is still poor, and above the official estimate of 26%. Self-rated poverty has been hovering at the 50% level during the Arroyo and Aquino administrations. A dip in the figure is meaningless in the face of the fact that the poor have been in poverty for decades.