Mahar Mangahas: Pioneer in ‘Social Weather Reporting’

My father was a satirical columnist and gardener. My mother was a music professor at the University of the Philippines (UP), where I lived from childhood to age 35, by then a UP professor myself. For lack of a campus school when I was 5, my Protestant parents put me into the Jesuits’Ateneo deManila (now a university, ADMU) up to high school, after which I went to UP, that gave free tuition to faculty children. For college, I chose economics with no idea of how to make a living from it. With as much time spent in the billiards hall as in the classroom, I was not a top student, yet did well enough to be offered work at the UP School of Economics (UPSE), two blocks from my home. There I discovered that research and teaching were fun too. I took courses (still on free tuition) in economics and statistics, encouraged by my mentor, Jose Encarnacion, Jr., who counted them equally towards my master’s in economics. Applied Research Quality Life (2016) 11:635–637 DOI 10.1007/s11482-016-9474-7