The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) releases today the profile of targeted poor families based on the result of the LISTAHANAN second round of assessment implemented in 2015.
The second assessment, which covered 15.1 million households, identified 5.1 million targeted poor households nationwide. This latter figure translates to 5.5 million targeted poor families or 28.7 million individuals.
“The LISTAHANAN data on the targeted poor households were collected through a comprehensive, objective and transparent house-to-house assessment”, stated DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman. The DSWD enumerated all families in rural-classified barangays and in pockets of poverty of urban-classified barangays.
The assessment used the Proxy Means Test (PMT) models to estimate the per capita income of the households. Through this assessment, the DSWD found that the 5.1 million targeted poor households nationwide have annual per capita income less than the poverty threshold reported by the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) for 2015. Most of these targeted households reside in Visayas and Mindanao as nine out of the 10 regions with the most number of targeted poor households are part of the said island clusters.
The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) topped the list with 11.2% share or 573,446 targeted poor households. ARMM is followed by Region VII (Central Visayas) and Region X (Northern Mindanao) with 525,561 and 485,539 targeted poor households, respectively.
Meanwhile, 8 out of 10 or 76.6% of the targeted poor households reside in rural areas, 2 out 10 or 23.4% live in urban areas.
Of the 28.7 million individuals, 48.4% or 13.9 million are women while 51.6% or 14.8 million are men. It may be noted that children constitute 15.1 million or 52.7% of the total targeted poor population.
Of the 10.7 million children aged 5 to 17 years old, 215,244 reported having an occupation. Most of these children (123,578) are laborers and unskilled workers.
Fisher folks, farmers and foresters comprise about 2.8 million or 17.9% of the 15.5 million targeted poor individuals belonging to the labor force or those aged 15 years old and above. The majority (53% or 8.2 million) reported having no occupation at the time of the assessment.
Senior citizens comprise only 4.2% or 1.2 million individuals. While, 1.1% of the total targeted poor population or 313,574 are persons with disability.
“Aside from the demographics of the population covered in LISTAHANAN, other information such as access to safe water and electricity, quality of housing materials, tenure status of the family’s house and lot and their specific occupation are available upon request,” Sec. Soliman shared.
The list however of names and addresses of targeted poor households, families or individuals can only be obtained upon execution of a data sharing agreement with the DSWD. This is to ensure that the list will be only used for implementation of programs and services meant to improve their well-being.
“To ensure transparency in the data-gathering process and maintain the integrity of the list, the assessment involved public validation of the initial list of poor generated from the said assessments,” Sec. Soliman explained.
Appeals of those who were not assessed and complaints of those who contest the list of poor were received and resolved by the Local Verification Committee (LVC) at the municipal or city level during validation. LVCs are composed of the local social welfare and planning officers and three other members from civil society organizations.
“This ensured the completeness, accuracy and inclusiveness of the process,” added Secretary Soliman.
While the Listahanan can generate statistics on the targeted poor households and families, it does not provide the official poverty statistics. The official poverty statistics released by Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) provides data on poverty and subsistence incidences based on poverty and food thresholds.
The LISTAHANAN or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) is an administrative tool for targeting poor families.
It establishes a centralized database of targeted poor families to serve as basis for identifying beneficiaries of social protection programs and services, minimizing wastage of resources to unintended recipients.
Consistent with the definition of poor in Republic Act 8425, LISTAHANAN classifies households with approximated incomes falling below the official provincial poverty thresholds reported by the PSA as poor.
By Nerisa Faye Villanueva
