SO WHAT has changed that has caused the increase in hunger? Certainly one answer to that question is the decrease in purchasing power and with it, the capacity of consumers to buy food.  

Affecting the affordability of food, which today takes up approximately 60 percent to 70 percent of the average person’s total income, are unemployment and underemployment as well as both overall inflation and food inflation. Table 2 shows changes in these factors over the last five years. 

TABLE 2: Unemployment, underemployment, and inflation
	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004
COMBINED UNEMPLOYMENT and UNDEREMPLOYMENT    Rate    Level	32.9% 9,414	28.3% 8,659	28.4% 8,983	28.4% 9,157	29.4% 9,822
INFLATION    Overall    Food	4.5% 1.9%	6.1% 3.9%	3.0% 1.9%	3.0% 2.0%	5.5% 5.8%

In terms of level of unemployed and underemployed, the 29.4-percent rate is the worst in the last four years. With less income from employment, people would obviously have less money to buy food. Let’s not even go to where they are getting the money they are spending.  

But those who still have steady income may not be that happy either. Overall inflation, after all, decreases their purchasing power. From 2000 to 2003, food inflation was always less than overall inflation. But in 2004, this was reversed. The 5.8-percent food inflation rate was higher than the 5.5 percent overall inflation rate. It is also the highest for the last five years. With the double whammy of higher unemployment and underemployment, as well as higher inflation, hunger will inevitably increase.  

What makes matters worse is that we have inequitable growth. About half our income goes to only 20 percent of our population. The latest figures available puts the poverty incidence for 2000 at 34 percent, versus the 33 percent recorded in 1997. There are many more poor people now as compared to 2000, so it is unlikely that the poverty rate has improved.

Yet even during the period from 1985 to 1997 when the poverty incidence dropped from 44 percent to 33 percent, the poorest 20 percent of the population improved their income by only 0.5 percent for every one-percent growth in average income, according to an Asian Development Bank study. Clearly, we should also work on more equitable distribution of income.