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Official poverty statistics
in the Philippines are generated by the National
Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) with
geographic disaggregation from the national up
to the provincial level. In addition to the
official statistics, there are several ongoing
efforts to generate other poverty indicators'
with disaggregation below the provincial level.
The wealth of poverty statistics at the
subnational level offers an opportunity for an
integrated poverty mapping system that shows the
various dimensions of poverty and allows users
of poverty statistics a micro perspective on the
poverty situation in the Philippines. While
several efforts have been exerted in the past to
produce poverty maps, sustainability and
institutionalization have not been achieved. In
recognition of the need to regularly provide
planners and decision makers with useful tools
for the formulation of poverty reduction
strategies, the NSCB has initiated efforts to
produce prototype
poverty maps for the provinces of Zamboanga del
Norte, Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga Sibugay.
The Minimum Basic Needs
framework with its three major concerns of
survival, enabling and security, was used as
basis for selecting the measures of poverty
because this was deemed to contain indicators
that are already being measured and collected at
the municipal level, the framework having been
in place for several years now. Thus, indexes
were computed out of the indicators for the
components of the three major concerns of
SURVIVAL, SECURITY and ENABLING.
The municipal indexes were
plotted on the maps using GIS tools and
technology. Maps were made for the individual
indicators, the composite indexes and the
over-all poverty index for selected provinces of
the region.
Poverty
maps make possible the integration of data from
various sources such as surveys and
administrative-based data and from different
disciplines such as social, economic and
environment data. Since different dimensions of
well-being can be examined and integrated, these
maps serve as very useful tools to local
government units as well as local chief
executives, particularly in identifying priority
areas that should benefit from anti-poverty
programs and interventions.
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