PUERTO PRINCESA City – Exactly 193,467 households or 30% of the total 651,884 assessed in the MIMAROPA Region are poor, according to the Listahanan Third Round Assessment or Listahanan 3 by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Listahanan, the government’s mechanism for identifying who and where the poor are, shows that 25% of the poor households reside in urban barangays and 75% in rural barangays.

In Occidental Mindoro, there are 39,899 (20.62%) poor households, Oriental Mindoro 41,473 (21.44%), Marinduque 11,628 (6.01%), Romblon 29,744 (15.37%), and Palawan 70,723 (36.56%) households.

The Listahanan 3 assessment covered the five provinces in the region with a total of  1,326 field workers in 2019 and was completed in 2021 despite of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Listahanan used the Proxy Means Test (PMT), a statistical model that estimates household income through observable and verifiable indicators such as materials in housing structures, and households’ access to basic services and facilities such as water, electricity, health, education, and assets among others,” said Editha B. Ocampo, Policy and Plans Division Chief.

The PMT estimated income is compared to the existing poverty threshold set by the Philippine Statistics Authority on which household incomes that fall below the provincial threshold are considered poor.

The database further shows the average household size among the poor in the region is four, most of them owning cell phones at 56%, television at 33%, and motorcycles at 21 percent. In contrast, 0.74% of the poor households have no access to electricity mostly found in Occidental and Oriental Mindoro provinces.

Listahanan data also revealed that in every 100 poor households, 26 have no toilet facilities and ways of depositing waste include open pit and pail systems.

On the other hand, 33% of poor households in MIMAROPA belong to an Indigenous Peoples (IP) group. The province of Palawan has the highest magnitude of poor IP households at 61%, mostly Palaw’an tribe.

The new profile of the poor was released yesterday during the Listahanan 3 Regional Launch anchored with its theme, “Bawat bahay Magkakasama sa Kaunlaran.”

Moreover, the Listahanan 3 list of the poor can be accessed through a data-sharing agreement. ###