Amidst the current attention on the situation that the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court face, most Filipinos agree that poverty remains the country's central problem, and solving it is the major challenge.

"The top 1% of the nation's families (185,000) have an income equal to the income of the bottom 30% of poor families numbering 5.5 million; this 1% of the nation's families make the laws, dispense justice, implement programs, and control media."

During the conference, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, described poverty conditions in this way:

"Poverty is mounting, streets all over the country are teeming with beggars and dislocated indigenous peoples. The children of the poor wake up to poverty, eat poverty for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and sleep poverty - without understanding why they are such. There is a proliferation of poor households erected right on the bangketas (sidewalks), above the esteros (canals), under bridges, in the karitons (carts) on the hillsides and even in cemeteries."

Atty. Christian Monsod, a convenor of the summit, declared that "the inequality of income has not changed since EDSA (1986), since studies show that there is very little of a middle class to speak of. This means that 99% (of Filipinos) are also poor." He echoed an earlier statement last July 2011 in the Bishops-Businessmen's Conference:

"Twenty-five years after EDSA, poverty and gross inequalities continue to confront us. Our society is still feudalistic, dominated by a leadership elite that manages to rotate among themselves the levers of power regardless of whose turn it is in government."

In the summit, Monsod pointed out that despite a decline in the official poverty rate, official figures show that the number of poor Filipinos, based on a definition of those living below PhP 46 per day, grew from 21.3 million in 1998 to 23.6 million in 2009, with 9.4 million of them living below PhP 32 per day and thus unable to avail of 2,000 calories per day.

In its statement, the Summit also criticized the government' centerpiece anti-poverty program, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), which grants to families up to PhP 1,400 monthly in exchange for having their children go to school or vaccinated.

"But the PhP 1,400 per family monthly is way below the official PhP 7,000 poverty threshold for a family of five just to stay afloat. Only 2 million families are benefiting from the program, which is less than half of the bottom 30% of poor families."

In the sidelines of the summit, Monsod also stated a basic shortcoming of the CCT program:

"It's a temporary, stopgap measure in giving results but it must be broader and wider than that to attack the roots of the problem - the imbalances in power, the maldistribution of power and so on, because those are the roots.

In an earlier forum, Monsod took issue with the government's measurement of poverty. He argued that there is "very little difference" among these classifications of the poor, noting that "when the very poor gets hungry, the poor and the near poor also experience the same." He criticized the PhP 46 per day poverty threshold as low, urging that it be raised to PhP 87 or US$ 2 per day.

The conference statement raised questions not only about how poverty is measured, but also how the poor are identified, observing that there "are also problems in catching the poorest of the poor, who have no permanent addresses, in the CCT network."

It is helpful therefore to review the concepts of poverty and the poor in all their complexity and multi-dimensional nature. Poverty is usually defined as the inability to be supplied with socially acceptable minimum basic needs for decent living and wellbeing - physical, psychological, cultural, and social. Much of it corresponds to material deprivation in terms of inadequate goods and services, and thus is largely based on inadequate income. The thresholds are usually calculated by estimating minimum standards of food and other basic needs.

However, an authentic poverty threshold is also one below which families and individuals experience deprivation in terms of feeling socially excluded, and above which they feel free from this exclusion.

How reliable, socially acceptable and credible these are can be seen in what are called "self-rated" poverty surveys, which seek to identify the poverty threshold based on how people assess their own social conditions given their incomes. In modern developed countries, the official poverty thresholds established by their governments tended to match or reflect those based on people's own assessment of their socio-economic status, suggesting that they are accurate, reliable, and credible.

The Philippines offers a different picture. The country's poverty incidence according to the National Statistical Coordinating Board (NSCB) is 26.5% among the population and 20.9% among families in 2009. On the other hand, the latest (as of September 2011) self-rated poverty surveys of the non-government Social Weather Stations (SWS) show that 52% of Filipinos consider themselves poor. This percentage is roughly twice or more than that of the official poverty rate.

The NSCB design for estimating basic needs is itself questionable, to begin with. For one, both the old and new food baskets are inadequate, designed to provide for only 80% of nutrient requirements.

Second, the estimate does not include expenses for recreation and emergencies. This makes it outright socially unacceptable.

Third, the downward tweaking by the NSCB last February 2011, from the previous PhP 52 to PhP 46 per day is based on even more downgraded food quality standards. Responding to a congressional investigation on the matter (see related news), SWS President Dr Mahar Mangahas reveals that to justify the daily PhP 46 threshold, items such as fried rice, fried galunggong (round scad), milk for children, bananas for dinner, and palaman (filling) from pan de sal (common food bread) were removed from the food basket.

This allowed the official poverty incidence rate of Filipino families in 2009 to instantly drop from what 26.3% to merely 20.9%. This statistical anomaly thus may appear to support the absurd and perverse premise that lowering nutrition levels, and, thus, the quality of life of Filipinos, can alleviate poverty. Instead of presenting a fact-based picture of poverty, what appear are window-dressed figures seemingly aimed at artificially catching up with the Millennium Development Goal poverty reduction targets.

As for identifying the poor and selecting CCT beneficiaries, the data is primarily collected through proxy means testing (PMT). As explained by the World Bank that designed and funds the program, PMT gathers household data such as home and housing structure and materials and ownership of durable goods, but not the actual incomes.

Though much less reliable, this method is deemed feasible because it is expected that in countries with a high percentage of informal sector households, such as the Philippines, these households will tend to avoid supplying accurate income data to evade or discourage government taxation. Ordinarily, those in the informal sector receive irregular undocumented incomes that often fluctuate from day to day and whose exact amounts are little known but to a few close relatives. Since the CCT aims to select grantees from among the poorest families, there is the incentive for registrants to under-declare their actual incomes.

Besides, it would be just as difficult to ascertain where the household incomes of the informal sector are finally redistributed. This is because many, if not most, Filipino families are extended networks wherein undocumented cash grants are passed on, and income redistributed, to poorer relatives residing elsewhere.

In a society with limited empowered communities and families and with limited trust in their political institutions, establishing accuracy and finding the truth about the actual poverty situation and its roots will be difficult. But it has to be done if poverty is to be addressed. After all, knowing the problem is half-way to solving it.