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HIGH
fuel prices, holiday-based inflationary forces,
underemployment—bring them on! The Filipino spirit is
unsinkable, especially at Christmas time and the New
Year, and the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS)
survey further support this view.
The SWS
reported that its Fourth Quarter of 2007 Survey, which
had gauged public sentiment on Christmas since 2002,
showed once again a high percentage of people in high
spirits—64 percent expect Christmas this year to be
happy with only 8 percent feeling otherwise and 27
percent believing it will neither be happy nor sad.
The
survey showed these sentiments were reflected among all
regions and all social classes, though more poor people
than rich folk think they would have a happy Christmas
this year.
Observers said it only shows it is the togetherness of
family and camaraderie of friends rather than material
riches that make people really happy, and with
Filipinos, there is almost an infinite well of these
spiritual riches, but perhaps eroded in the upper
reaches of the economic spectrum.
The SWS
said the level of holiday cheer went up by 10 percentage
points in Metro Manila, where 55 percent of the
respondents said they expected a “happy Christmas”
compared with 45 percent in 2006, though still lower
than the 77 percent posted by the region in 2002.
The area
where expectations of a happy Christmas are highest is
in the Visayas, where 68 percent of the respondents are
upbeat about the holiday season, up by 8 percentage
points from last year.
This is
followed by Mindanao where 66 percent expect a happy
Christmas, a slight reduction from 70 percent in 2006
and the lowest recorded happiness level in that area,
and in the rest of Luzon, 65 percent, the same as last
year.
The SWS
said that “expectations of a happy Christmas are the
same across all socioeconomic classes”, but added that
compared to last year, “the proportions of those
expecting a happy Christmas in 2007 increased among the
E [the poorest], but declined among the middle to upper
classes [ABC].”
Expectations of a happy Christmas went down by 5
percentage points among the classes ABC, or to 64
percent from 69 percent in 2006 but increased among the
poorest class E to 64 percent from 58 percent in 2006;
for Class D, 64 percent of the respondents look forward
to Christmas.
The SWS
said the proportion of the population expecting a happy
Christmas “has been unchanged for the past four years.”
When the
survey was first conducted in the last quarter of 2002,
a big proportion, 82 percent, expected a happy
Christmas, but this dropped to 77 percent in 2003, and
then fell to the 60s level in the next four years.
The
latest survey was conducted among 1,200 respondents
nationwide from November 30 to December 3, with error
margins of ±3 percent for national percentages and ±6
percent for area percentages.
SWS said
the area estimates were weighted by National Statistics
Office medium-population projections for 2007 to obtain
the national estimates. |
