Foreword | Acknowledgments | About Us

The following steps were undertaken in the computation of poverty indicators.

The poverty mapping methodology developed by the NSCB was distinct from other poverty mapping activities being undertaken by other agencies. The indicators from the Minimum Basic Needs framework for the three major concerns of survival, security, and enabling were collected at the municipal level from the Provincial Planning and Development Office. Data submitted were carefully assessed and validated to check the data quality in terms of consistency and presence of outliers/extreme values.

The methodology involved the computation of a composite index out of the indicators for the components of the three major MBN concerns of SURVIVAL, SECURITY, and ENABLING. The component indexes are derived as the means (or simple arithmetic average) of their respective indicators. Thus, the HEALTH INDEX would be the average of the infant mortality rate, child mortality rate and ratio of population to health workers. The composite POVERTY INDEX is then obtained as the unweighted arithmetic average of the indexes for the three major components.

It must be noted, however, that the  initial list of indicators were not uniformly stated, such that, some indicators would move up to portray a favorable situation and move down to show an unfavorable situation while other indicators would behave in the opposite direction. For example, lower Infant Mortality Rates (IMRs) would be favorable but lower school participation rates would be unfavorable. Thus, the indicators were restructured so that movements in one direction would have similar meanings. To do this, the complement of some indicators was adopted, such as, the complement of the school participation rate would be school non-participation rate.

Next, the individual indicators were converted into unit-less measures since these indicators were not expressed in the same units and, therefore, could not be aggregated. For example, the IMR is expressed as the number of infant deaths per 1,000 livebirths, while school participation rates are in terms of percentages. Conversion into unit-less measures of the indicators is done by first deriving the provincial values of the indicator. The municipal values of the indicators are then divided by the provincial values if the comparison is to be made among municipalities of the same province. All the resulting quotients are called INDEXES.

It would have been desirable to compare the municipal values against a provincial target that might have been specified in the provincial development plan or against a standard set by the concerned agency, such as the Department of Health or the Department of Education. In this exercise, in the absence of a set provincial target, the provincial value of the indicator was used as the basis for the comparison among the municipalities. No weights were used to derive the provincial value as raw data were available. The provincial value is simply derived as the ratio of the total of the municipal values to the total relevant population. All the municipal indicators into unit-less values so they can be aggregated to derive the composite index at the provincial level.

The use of the provincial value against which the situation of the municipalities are compared enables the users to rank the performance of the municipalities within the province for each of the indicators.

TERMS OF USE

 email: nscb5@yahoo.com