Filipino families who experienced hunger at least once during the first three months of 2022 rose to 3.1 million, results of a Social Weather Survey released Monday showed, as household budgets struggled to keep up with soaring prices of goods.
The hunger rate for April was 12.2%, 0.4 points higher than the 11.8% in December 2021, and the 10% in September last year. The figure however is lower than the 13.1% annual average for 2021, SWS said.
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Of the 3.1 million families who said they experienced hunger, 2.4 million or 9.3% experienced "moderate hunger" which means that they went hungry "only once" or "a few times" according to SWS.
The remaining 2.9% or around 744,000 families experienced "severe hunger" which means they went hungry "often" or "always" in the first three months of the year, SWS said.
Like in previous surveys, SWS said hunger was highest in Metro Manila at 18.6% of families followed by Mindanao at 13.1%, the rest of Luzon at 11.7%, and the Visayas at 7.8%.
READ: 4 in 10 Filipino Families Feel Poor, SWS Survey Shows
Involuntary hunger also increased to 8.1% from 7.5% among families who rated themselves as "not poor" as well as those who identified themselves as "not food-poor"(7.9% from 7.6%) and "food-poor" (21.8% from 21%), the survey showed.
The April 19-27 survey interviewed 1,440 adult respondents with a sampling margin of error of +/- 2.6 percent for national percentages.
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