Food and Poverty Threshold

Food Threshold is the minimum income require for a family/individual to meet the basic food needs, which satisfies the nutritional requirements for economically necessary and socially desirable physical activities while Poverty Threshold is the minimum income required for a family/individual to meet the basic food and non-food requirements.

In 2018, Siquijor registered on the average, a food threshold of Php7,456 (Figure 1) a 19.8 percent increase from 2015 at Php6,221. This translates that in Siquijor, a family of five (5) needs at least Php7,456 on the average, to meet their family’s basic food needs in a month.

The Poverty Threshold in 2018 for a family of five (5) in Siquijor needed at least Php10,677, on the average, to meet both basic food and non-food in a month (Figure 2). This is an increase of 19.8 percent from 2015 which was estimated at Php8,908.

Poverty incidence refers to the proportion of families/individuals with per capita income less than the per capita poverty threshold to the total number of families/ individuals. Among Filipino families in Siquijor in 2018, it was estimated at 7.2 percent. This means that 72 out of 1000 families have income below the amount needed to buy their basic food and non-food needs in 2018. Magnitude of poor refers to the number of families/individuals who are income poor. In Siquijor, the magnitude of poor families was estimated at 1,700 in 2018 while in 2015, this was estimated at 16,500, a decrease of 14,800 families in three (3) year period from 2015 to 2018.

In 2018, the poverty incidence among population of Siquijor was estimated at 10.4 percent, which means that 104 out 1000 Siquijodnon whose income were below the amount needed to buy their basic food and non-basic food needs. While in 2015 the poverty incidence among population was recorded at 51.0 percent. The magnitude of poor population was about 10,300 in 2018. In 2015, this was estimated at 75,000 Siquijodnon (Table 2). Between the two (2) periods a decrease of 64.7 thousand Filipinos in Siquijor was noted.

The subsistence incidence among families in Siquijor was estimated at 1.9 percent in 2018.This means that 19 out 1000 families in Siquijor have income below the minimum amount needed to buy their basic food needs in 2018. In 2015, the proportion of families who are food poor was recorded at 18.8 percent. About 400 families fall below the food threshold in 2018. In 2015, this was estimated at 6.6 thousand families (Table 3). Subsistence incidence refers to the proportion of families or individuals with per capita income less than the per capita food threshold to the total number of families/individuals. It is equal to the proportion of the food poor.

Among the population in Siquijor, 34 out of 1000 Siquijodnon were categorized as food poor with income below the amount needed to buy basic food needs in 2018. In 2015, it was estimated at 20.5 percent. About 3.4 thousand Filipinos in Siquijor whose income falls below the food threshold in 2018. In 2015, this was estimated at 30.1 thousand, a difference of 26.7 thousand in two (2) year period (Table 4).

Income gap, poverty gap and severity of poverty (squared poverty gap) are other poverty measures generated. Income gap measures the average amount of income required by the poor in order to get out of poverty expressed in relation to the poverty thresholds. The poverty gap is the ratio by which the mean income of the poor falls below the poverty line. Table 5 below shows that in 2018 the income gap of Siquijor was estimated at 18.5 per cent. This implies that on the average a poor family with five (5) members needs an additional monthly income of Php1,975 in order to get out of poverty.

Among the provinces in Central Visayas, Bohol improved from Cluster 3 in 2015 to Cluster 4 in 2018 while Cebu remained in Cluster 4. Likewise, Negros Oriental improved from Cluster 2 in 2015 to Cluster 3 in 2018. Siquijor was the most improved province in the region from Cluster 1 (poorest) in 2015 to Cluster 5 (least poor) in 2018 (Table 6).

(SGD) AURELI M. CANDA
Chief Statistical Specialist