On Monday, the Philippine’s entire political class, and we in the media who report on, and analyze, what that class is up to, stopped, looked, and listened, to the president. Her State of the Nation Address engaged the attention of her critics and admirers alike. Its contents were aimed at describing how she intends to uplift the plight of the poor.

Of course the president’s allies jumped the gun, and said pretty much the same thing. The long and bruising fight for the House speakership, for example, ended with a statement made by Jose de Venecia from the rostrum, barely an hour before the State of the Nation Address, which said the 21st century’s challenge to lawmakers, is to defeat poverty. Government, we’re told, should work for the greatest good for the greatest number.

And what number is that, exactly?

Around the time President Arroyo began her presidency, we know for a fact, how many Filipinos there were: About 76.5 million. Since then, however, we’ve had to rely on projections as to how many Filipinos there are. They can vary widely.

Whether its 12 million or 15 million more Filipinos that have been added in the six years of the Arroyo presidency, past censuses gives us an idea of how large this addition population is. At 12 million, the babies born since 2000 equals the entire Philippine population in 1927. At 15 million, it equals the entire Philippine population in 1936.

And I think you’d be hard put to find any equivalent seven-year period where we added so many people to our population. It took from 1946 to 1966 to double our population from 16 to 32 million, for example, and from 1966 to 1993 to double it yet again to 64 million; by 2030 we’re expected to double it yet again.

But neither in the State of the Nation Address, or the critics’ reactions, or in the media did we hear that from 78 million Filipinos in 2001, we will number 93 million in 2010. And that this unchecked population growth will be one of the president’s legacies -and that of the Catholic bishops who hold the president hostage to their views on population.

Now only by getting a clear idea of how many Filipinos there are, can we begin to tackle how many among us, constitutes the various income groups in our society. Government statistics tells us this: With regards to poverty incidence, 30 percent of the population was classified as poor as of 2003. Which means as of 2003, 70 percent were not classified as poverty-stricken.

You and I may know poverty when we see it, and the poor surely know what poverty is because unlike you and I, they have to endure it and live it. But for policy makers, they have to rely on something more precise.

That definition is provided by law.

Republic Act 8425, otherwise known as the Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act, defines who the poor are. The law says that the poor are individuals and families whose income fall below the poverty threshold as defined by the government and/or those who cannot afford to provide their basic needs of food, health, education, housing and other amenities of life in a sustained manner.

Armed with this legal definition, the National Statistics Coordination Board, by means of Resolution No. 1, Series of 2003, has a process for estimating poverty. It starts with the computation of the food threshold: “This refers to the minimum income/expenditure required for a family/individual to meet the basic food needs, which satisfies the nutritional requirements for economically necessary and socially desirable physical activities.”

This is determined by using regional menus priced at the provincial level. The NCSB says, “The one-day menus were determined by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) using low-cost, nutritionally adequate food items satisfying basic food requirements of 2,000 calories, which are 100 percent adequate for the Recommended Energy and Nutrient Intake (RENI) for energy and protein and 80 percent adequate for the RENI for vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. These menus were used to estimate the per capita per day food cost.”

For example, for a family of five, the Food Threshold was as follows: In 2005 — 3,904 pesos (monthly), or 128 pesos spent on food daily. In 2006 — 4,151 pesos (monthly), or 137 pesos spent on food daily.

From this calculation, comes the next, the poverty threshold: “This refers to the minimum income/expenditure required for a family/individual to meet the basic food and non-food requirements.” This requires figuring out the additional income required for minimum non-food basic needs.

Non-food basic needs, as determined by government statisticians, include the following: Clothing and footwear; fuel, light and water; housing maintenance and other minor repairs; rent; medical care; education; transportation and communications; non-durable furnishings; household operations; and personal care and other items.

To compute for the poverty threshold, the food threshold is divided by the proportion according to a fixed formula. The NSCB recalculates all these every year, and here’s how it’s been calculated, for 2007: “Filipino families living in NCR comprising of five members should have earned a monthly income of 8,254 pesos to be able to sustain their families’ minimum basic food and non-food needs. Of the 8,254 pesos monthly income, 4,920 pesos (60 percent of the poverty threshold) should have been allocated for basic food needs and 3,334 pesos (40 percent of the poverty threshold) to basic non-food needs of the family.”

We’re often told that our population is overwhelmingly poor, but government statistics tells us that the poor, at 30 percent of our population, are actually a minority.

But statistics are, of course, in a sense, arbitrary. The government admits that 30 percent are poor, based on definitions made by our lawmakers, and calculations done by statisticians. But what do our own countrymen have to say about the matter?

For that, you have to refer to surveys, another means of number-crunching entirely. Pulse Asia, in February-March 2006, found out that when it came to rating themselves, 9 percent of Filipinos considered themselves very poor; 65 percent called themselves poor; 10 percent said they were on the borderline; 16 percent said they were well-off or wealthy.

Now these survey results should be food for thought. What we have here is a mismatch: Official figures on one hand, and how people see themselves, on the other. On one hand, official statistics, as we’ve seen, have a lot going for them. They’re based on real data. Public opinion surveys, on the other hand, only measure what people feel — and who’s to say what we feel, is based on reality?

But that’s precisely my point. How we see the world is all that matters, isn’t it? Our officials can tell us we’re not poor, but that won’t stop you from feeling poor, and thus, taking political action based not so much on how government sees you, but on how you see yourself.