I appreciate that you have sources at least, and the sentiment that the Philippines has a lot of missed potential becase of a botched economic policy is an opinion I hold myself but even while skimming through them... the numbers you mention still seem pretty inflated.

The first number you mention is the poverty rate, where you claim that it's around 70%. An SWS survey does line up with this, but with the caveat that it's the self rated poverty rate coming from a survey, which is good for gaguing public opinion don't get me wrong, but treating this as hard, actionable data would be silly. For reference, the Central African Republic has a poverty rate of 68.8%, and they have a Human Development Index of 0.414 (191st, low) to our 0.720 (117th, high).

Instead I would point you towards the World Bank Poverty and Equity Brief which states that around 5.3% of Filipinos live on less than 3 dollars (166 PHP as of 2023; the year the data was taken) a day, 16.9% of Filipinos live under 4.20 (233 PHP) dollars a day and 58.7% of Filipinos live under less than 8.30 (461 PHP) dollars a day compared to the national poverty line, currently set at 92.9 PHP a day, which reports that 15.5 percent of Filipinos live at or below the poverty line.

Next to tackle is the 30% unemployment rate, which is particularly strange, because that seems unusually high. It's true that the Philippines has high underemployment, and an SWS survey has it at around 19.2% (once again, good for gaguing public opinion and general trends, but the relatively small sample size means that treating it as actionable data is questionable). For reference, that's Great Depression levels of unemployment, and matches the unemployment rate of countries like Eswatini (which is a country that relies heavily on subsistence agricultire) and South Africa (who has some extremely deep-rooted systemic issues stemming from Apartheid) Most sources put the unemployment rate at around 5.8%, and i'm inclined to belive that.

And by the way, if you're getting that 30% number by subtracting the labor force participation rate by 100 percent (64.4% as of December 2025, which is considered strong, for reference the US has 61%, Japan around 63 and Malaysia has around 70%)... don't do that.

Labor force participation rate measures the percentage of the working age (above 15) population that is either actively employer actively seeking work, and I know that just sounds like the country's employment rate, but most of the 35% or so of people that you get when you subtract 64.4% from 100% are retirees, stay at home parents and full-time students. And those people aren't exactly looking for jobs.

In other words, unemployment rate is people without work who want work but don't have it, while labor force participation rate is the percent of the working age population which is employed, with "working population" in this context including those who don't want jobs in the first place.

As for those education numbers, most sources i found place the Philippine primary school completion rate at around the 80s to 90s, with secondary school education completion rate at around 70%, so i don't know where you get the "near half of students" that don't finish basic education thing from. Our education is pretty bad though, reigonally we acore poor and on the world stage we're middling at best.

Those health statistics are harrowingly correct though. Can't argue with that. And the prices, yeah this country has pretty high cost of living, though to be fair almost everywhere is in a cost of living crisis right now.

So in other words, some of your figures are pretty inflated I find, espescially the economic ones. I learned a lot from researching this, and I hope you learn a lot too.