Poverty estimates are available for the years 1997 and 2000, at the national, regional, and provincial levels, urban and rural.

The specific indicators of poverty include subsistence and poverty thresholds and incidence of families and population, income gap, poverty gap, and severity of poverty. All these indicators are computed every three years while the subsistence and poverty thresholds are computed on annual basis. In addition, the NSCB also computed the 1997 and 2000 gini coefficients, which is a measure of the inequality in income distribution, for all of the provinces.

The data are released by the Social Sectors B Division of the NSCB based on the methodology recommended and approved by the NSCB Technical Working Group on Income and Poverty Statistics and the NSCB Executive Board, respectively. The data are published through the Philippine Poverty Statistics series which contains analyses, tables and graphs. The data series and publication are updated upon the availability of the results of the Family Income and Expenditures Survey of the National Statistics Office. The survey is undertaken every three years.

With the government's priority concern of alleviating the poverty situation in the country, the poverty statistics are used in identifying the magnitude and locus of poor Filipinos so that appropriate interventions can be implemented.