Cordillera Administrative Region – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has released its updated national database of poor households which has been the result of the 2015 Listahanan second round of household assessment.

The Listahanan, also known as the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), identified 5.1 million poor households out of the 15.1 million assessed households nationwide. This figure translates to 5.5 million poor families or 28.7 poor individuals. In the Cordillera Administrative Region, the Listahanan identified 64, 327 poor households out of 293, 547 assessed households.

“The number of poor households in our region is a result of the assessment conducted last May to December 2015. The data is only a part of the regional profile of poor households which will be release this June 2016,” DSWD-CAR Regional Director Janet P. Armas shared

The regional profile of poor household includes statistical data on poor households, youth, senior citizens, persons with disability and functional difficulties, educational attainment and working status of household members, and housing materials, among others. These data sets included in the regional profile can be used by various stakeholders as basis for crafting programs and policies for the aforementioned sectors.

Director Armas explained that data from assessed households were collected by hired enumerators and subjected to Proxy Means Test (PMT) to estimate the per capita income of the households. The estimated per capita income is compared with the official provincial poverty threshold released by NEDA to determine if households are poor or non-poor.

Unlike the regional profile which can be shared to various stakeholders, DSWD Secretary Corazon Soliman said that the Department will ensure that sharing of personal information available in the database will be regulated by the Department.

“The statistical data will be shared in the DSWD website, but for the names and addresses of poor households, a signed Memorandum of Agreement with the DSWD is needed. This is to ensure the confidentiality and security of the targeted households in the database against politicking,” Soliman added.

The first household assessment was conducted in 2009 to 2010 wherein the Listahanan identified 77,811 poor households or 33.51% out of 232,228 households.# DSWD-CAR, Social Marketing Unit, Kaye Ann O. Mapalo