Rich—as defined economically

Rich-as defined economically

by: Kendrick Chua, the Wealth Warrior

Debates have not been scarce on how to define the word rich. What may be rich for some may be poor for the others. Socially, being rich is portrayed as having more assets than one can ever keeps tab on, splurges like no tomorrow and donates to charity for philanthropy works.

Economically, to be “rich”, a household needs to belong to the 0.3% of the Philippine population. That means they are among the 255,000 Filipinos out there who takes home an annual income of about P2.06 million to P5.88 million with an average income of P3.03million.

Now, the “uber-rich” stands only 0.1% of the population or about 85,000 Filipinos enjoy this status. To qualify for this category, the household annual income should not be less than P6.78 million and a high of, well, sky is the limit for these individuals.

They are the ones that drive the fanciest of cars, live in the grandest of home (or homes), dine in the exclusive restaurants and travel to places other people not only just dream of, they never even heard of it!

If you’re earning anywhere between P251,000 to P2.04 million consider yourself still fortunate as you belong to the top 23% of the population defined as the middle class.

The rest of the 76.6% of the population is now considered “poor” with an average annual income of P109,000.00. These are, unfortunately, folks who can’t even have a decent meal or three, who barely can get by the day without their stomachs grumbling or their minds worrying about where they’ll get their next meal.

In a society, it is ideal that the middle-class takes a big chunk of the population. In our case, it is the “poor”. It is not a wonder why our self-rated incidence of poverty stands at 53% based on the result of the latest SWS survey. The rich accounts less than 1% of the population yet they perhaps hold more wealth than the total 76% population.

Whoever gets elected has some serious poverty problems to address. It will be a tossed-up between letting the rich gets richer the poor gets richer as well.

Tags: Philippine Economy, poverty, Wealth

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