Measuring hunger and thirst

BANTAY GOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

As I understand it, the measurement of “perceived hunger” does not really measure the actual number of people who are actually hungry. I think that getting the accurate data as to how any people are really hungry should involve more than just asking the respondents as to how many times they have experienced hunger in the past period or so.

 I am not a statistician myself, I have some amount of experience in market research, and somehow that is a similar set of sciences. I am not an economist either, but I do believe that the real hunger data should really just be a subset of poverty data, and the latter being just a subset of unemployment data.

And perhaps for purposes of this discussion, we could say that being in business is as good as being self-employed, and in that sense all self-employed people should be taken off the unemployed list.

Come to think of it, there does not seem to be a credible and reliable data about unemployment. I am basing that observation on the fact that all social data should be gathered from below, and not fabricated from the top. Therefore, it would actually be correct to say that the data from below should be gathered by the local government units (LGUs), possibly down to the barangay level. And in addition to that, there should be nationally accepted standards as to how unemployment should be measured, again all the way down to the barangay level. For example, there should be a clear understanding of what is meant by being underemployed. As it is now, underemployed generally means not being able to work for at least eight hours a day, but my late brother Ambassador Roy Seneres who was Chairman of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) told me that underemployed means working in a job that is below one’s qualifications.

As it is supposed to be, the unemployment rate is supposed to be a subset of the total labor force, and therefore it goes without saying that to begin with, the actual size of the labor force should be clearly defined, and it is very clear that only the LGUs could do that.

Logically speaking, it could be said that the total labor force should only include those who are employable, meaning to say that job seekers would have some employable skill or the other. It could also be said that those who are not seeking unemployment should no longer be counted in the labor force, but that is really debatable, because I think that even those who are not seeking employment could actually be wanting employment if they are given the chance, to work either on a part time or full time basis, including opportunities to be self-employed.

Does it necessarily mean that all those earning wages above the minimum wage are necessarily above the poverty level? Right now, I do not know the answer to that, but I think that that should be the case that all those who are earning above the minimum wage should already be above the poverty level, otherwise the minimum wage should be increased so that all those who are employed should no longer be poor.

That may sound too naive for me to say, but I am just engaging in a play of words, because all those who are above the poverty line should no longer be considered poor, at least by definition. Pardon me too for sounding a bit sarcastic, but would it not be fair to say that all those who are considered poor should also be considered hungry? It may be logical to say that, because the imaginary basket of goods that is used to measure poverty should actually include food items.

There was a time when everyone could get water for drinking or cooking anywhere, but that is no longer the case. It was not the case before, but as it is the case now, bottled water is already product, a commodity that we have to buy, otherwise we would not have anything to drink or cook with, and mind you, I am not yet talking about bathing and washing. I have no way to check it now, but it seems that drinking water is not yet included in the imaginary basket of goods.

What that means is that the poor would have to buy the water for them to drink; they would become poorer because they have to spend more money to be able to survive. Let us hope however that they would do better than just survive, because it means more to have a higher quality of life. Right now, our poor people might be eating, but that may not be eating nutritious food. How can our LGUs look into this?

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