SOME one million households in Central Visayas will be surveyed next month to find out who and where exactly the poorest families in the region are, and whether or not the number of poor households has gone up since 2009.
When the first Nationwide Household Assessment was conducted five years ago, there were 314,654 poor families in Region 7.
The annual poverty threshold then was P17,770.
By next month, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) 7 hopes to start assessing 1,016,270 households in the region for the “Listahan,” or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction, to identify poor or near poor families who deserve assistance from social protection programs and services.
52 variables
DSWD 7 information officer Leah Quintana said for this particular survey, not only the family’s income will be considered to determine whether or not they are poor.
A household’s access to basic services like water, power supply, education and health care, the educational attainment of each family member, and the state of their dwellings will also be assessed.
“There are 52 observable, verifiable variables, including the kind of housing materials they have, if they have a CR, water and power... all these are assigned a certain weight and we will then compute and assess if the family is poor or not,” DSWD 7 information officer Kerwin Macopia said during the Association of Government Information Officers forum yesterday.
“This is just an assessment to know where and who the poor are. There are no promises of aid at the time of the survey,” he said.
In the 2009 survey, 151,425 poor families were identified in Cebu; 88,550 in Negros Oriental; 70,028 in Bohol; and 4,651 in Siquijor. The 314,654 poor families in the region accounted for six percent of all poor families across the country.
The survey was then used as basis for the list of beneficiaries of government programs and services, and what specific service each family needs.
Quintana urged all local government units (LGUs), government agencies and even nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to use the survey results to identify beneficiaries of their anti-poverty programs.
She also urged LGU officials to encourage poor households in their localities to participate in the survey, as this will mean access to assistance from the government.
Among DSWD’s programs and services for poor families are the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, the modified conditional cash transfer program, social pension for indigent senior citizens, supplementary feeding program for children, sustainable livelihood program, National Community-driven Development Program, cash assistance for trafficked persons and job placement assistance.
Indigent senior citizens who are at least 77 years old are entitled to a P500 monthly pension from DSWD, provided that they don’t receive pension or assistance from family members. They must also be registered with their local Office of Senior Citizens Affairs office to qualify.
The DSWD has already identified the areas where the survey will be conducted. In rural areas, all households will be covered by the survey. As for the urban areas, “pockets of poverty,” or those areas where the urban poor are, have already been identified.
Proxy Means Test
After the enumerators complete the survey, all the information indicated in the family assessment form will then be encoded to a web application and are subject to the Proxy Means Test (PMT), a scientific means of analyzing the data.
After incomes are estimated using the PMT, the estimated income of a household is then compared with the poverty threshold per province, to determine if it’s poor or not.
“Families with estimated income that is equal to or less than the poverty threshold of the province are then classified as poor,” said Macopia.
In Central Visayas, the poverty threshold, or the minimum requirement for a family to meet its food and other basic needs, is P18,767, as of 2012.
Although the figures may be shared with other agencies, DSWD assured that the data will be protected so they will be used only for legitimate purposes by government agencies, LGUs and NGOs engaged in providing social services.
