Pinoy families most deprived of education - PSA

MANILA, Philippines — Among basic necessities, it is education that Filipino families lack the most in the past two years, a new study by the Philippine Statistics Authority released Wednesday showed.

Based on the PSA’s multidimensional poverty index — which sought to identify which basic need Filipinos are most deprived of — education consistently had the highest incidence of deprivation in 2016 and 2017 at 59.3 percent and 49.4 percent, respectively. 

The four dimensions that the PSA looked into were: Education Housing, Water and Sanitation, Health and nutrition and Employment

“These mean that six out of 10 families in 2016 and five out of 10 families in 2017 were deprived of basic education,” the PSA explained.

“That is, six out of 10 families had at least one family member aged 18 years old and above who did not complete basic education in 2016 and five out of 10 in 2017,” it added.

To note, the period covered by the PSA’s study did not capture latest efforts by the Duterte administration like the free tuition law, which the president signed in 2017 but was fully implemented this year.

According to the PSA, the health and nutrition dimension came next to education in the index, followed by housing, water and sanitation dimension and employment dimension.

The state statistics agency’s report also found that in 2017, the proportion of “multidimensionally deprived” Filipinos — or those who lack at least four out of the 13 indicators identified across four dimensions — was estimated at 17.3 percent, down from the previous year’s 23.9 percent.