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Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
April 23, 2026 | 2:56pm
Commuters disembark at LRT-1 Central Terminal Station in Manila on April 16, 2026, the temporary last stop for trains from Fernando Poe Jr. Station following limited operations.
The STAR / Ryan Baldemor
MANILA, Philippines — Half of adult Filipino adults believe their quality of life has deteriorated over the past 12 months, according to a new Social Weather Stations survey, which saw people's perceived well-being sink to its worst since 2021.
The First Quarter 2026 survey, conducted March 24-31 among 1,500 adults, found 50% said they were worse off, 26% said nothing changed, and 23% said they were better off.
This produced an overall net score of –26, classified as "low," SWS said.
That is a 19-point drop from -7 in November 2025, and 18 points below the full-year 2025 average of -8.
The survey results released Thursday, April 23, are the SWS' worst reading of this well-being indicator since September 2021, when the country was grappling with COVID-19 lockdowns, and the score sank to an "extremely low" -44.
The March survey was fielded as inflation, transport costs, and rice prices continued to squeeze household budgets in the first quarter of the year, with the United States-led war in the Middle East driving fuel prices up worldwide.
The November 2025 cycle — the comparison point — had itself already marked a slide from a brief rebound to +12 in June 2025.
Every region, every demographic fell
Mindanao suffered the steepest dive, falling 33 points from +2 to -31. Metro Manila dropped 19 points to -31. Balance Luzon fell 16 points to -23 and the Visayas slid 11 points to -25.
Urban residents took a harder hit than their rural counterparts, falling 22 points to -32 versus a 15-point drop to -18 in rural areas. Men and women declined by nearly identical margins, or 20 and 19 points, respectively.
Young adults lost the most ground
The sharpest single-group collapse came among 18-to-24-year-olds, whose score plummeted 35 points — from an "excellent" +31 in November to a merely "fair" -4 in March. Every older age bracket also worsened, with Filipinos 45 and above now deep in "very low" territory at -38 to -39.
Perceptions of a worsening quality of life also did not vary much by educational background. College graduates posted the mildest decline, slipping 13 points to a "mediocre" -19.
Non-elementary graduates fell the hardest, dropping 35 points to a "very low" -39.
A gauge tracked since 1983
SWS has asked Filipinos this quality-of-life question 164 times since April 1983, according to its news release.
The score spent most of those decades in negative territory, turned positive only around 2015, then collapsed during the pandemic.
It briefly recovered to near pre-pandemic levels in mid-2023 and again in the second half of 2024.
