Which way will poverty go?

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 05/27/2023

In 2023Q1, the national percentage of Self-Rated Poor households was 51, unchanged from 2022Q4. Last year, it had been 43 in Q1, 48 in Q2, and 49 in Q3. The halt in the rise of general poverty…

Not for Mother’s Day

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 05/13/2023

The new Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey report—“47% agree it is dangerous to publish things critical of the administration; 27% are undecided, 26% disagree” (www.sws.org.ph, 5/9/23)—is meant, not for Mother’s Day tomorrow, but for World Press Freedom…

9 Shawwal 1444 AH

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 04/29/2023

Eid Mubarak to Filipino Muslims everywhere, and to Muslims in the Philippines. Having done an Easter piece six days after Holy Week, I will do an Eid’l Fitr piece today, my first opportunity after Ramadan, which ended…

Are prayers answered?

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 04/15/2023

Holy Saturday being Social Climate’s annual day off, my Holy Week column is always the Saturday after. Last year’s “The religiosity of Filipinos” (4/23/22) looked into “hard” versus “soft” belief in God, and into beliefs in the…

Dismal science, dismal research?

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 04/01/2023

Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters. Most of the world’s poor people earn their living…

Numbers on ‘happiness’

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 03/25/2023

The annual International Day of Happiness (March 20) saw the release of World Happiness Report (WHR) 2023 recently. In this 10th WHR since the Day was established by the United Nations in 2012, Finland, scoring 7.80 on…

Subjective data, objective science

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 03/18/2023

Subjectivity in survey data cannot be avoided. The simple act of asking a sample of people certain questions, and recording their subjective answers, entails faith that the data will be useful to you. Surveys of voters’ intentions…

No cultural deficiency

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 03/11/2023

The phrase, “A damaged culture,” which first appeared in 1987 in The Atlantic magazine, is readily trotted out by lazy writers when things go wrong. But characterizing the Filipino people by it is wrong. It merely sounds…

Periodically blind to poverty

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 03/04/2023

Think of the government’s economic managers as pilots guided by instruments that periodically flash important figures on a panel in front of S. Some figures appear daily, like the stock price index and the foreign exchange rate.…

Religious, because Filipino

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 02/25/2023

In my opinion, our people, anywhere in the world, are very religious, not due to being mostly Catholic, or even due to being mostly Christian, but simply due to being Filipino. A few days ago—timed for Ash…

‘Pantawid’ is survey-backed

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 02/11/2023

The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is the government’s first true venture into solving the great poverty problem by identifying and targeting poor people to receive benefits directly, rather than by assuming that much benefit from untargeted…

GNP has expenditure sectors, too

Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet 02/04/2023

The gross national product (GNP) of the Philippines is the money value of all goods and services produced in a given time period by Filipino entities. As a measure of aggregate economic activity, it works; more GNP…

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