PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s administration has set an ambitious goal of reducing the national poverty rate to 9 percent by 2028, its final year, and government statistics indicate that we are heading in the right direction. Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) show, for example, that this rate declined from 18.1 percent in 2021 to 15.5 percent in 2023.

But recent revelations that the PSA uses an unrealistically low food poverty threshold of P64 a day — which is a substantial component of the poverty rate — casts some doubt on whether we are truly reaching this target in a meaningful way or merely moved the goalposts nearer by ignoring real-world conditions.