Filipinos most deprived of education access in poverty indicators — PSA

MANILA, Philippines — Among various indicators of poverty, Filipinos were found to be most deprived in gaining access to education, the new multidimensional poverty index (MPI) created by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.

The MPI, released by the PSA yesterday, captures deprivations on four dimensions comprising 13 indicators.

The index, which has a scale of zero to 100, provides information on which dimensions Filipinos have the least access to and complements income-based measures of poverty.

These four dimensions are education; housing, water and sanitation; health and nutrition; and employment.

These comprises the following indicators: school attendance, educational attainment, ownership of assets, access to toilet facility, access to source of water supply, security of tenure status of dwelling, access to housing materials, access to electricity, freedom from hunger, adequate food consumption, access to health insurance, relief from underemployment, and not having children who work instead of attending school.

In terms of dimension, education had the largest contribution to the MPI at 35.5 percent in 2016 and 36.9 percent in 2017.

Health and nutrition came next with a contribution of 26.2 percent in 2016 and 27.5 percent in 2017.

The share of housing, water and sanitation to the MPI was 26.4 percent in 2016 and 27.4 percent in 2017.  Employment dimension, on the other hand, had the least share to MPI at 10.9 percent in 2016 and 8.3 percent in 2017.

By specific indicator, Filipinos were found to be most lacking in educational attainment as it had the highest incidence of deprivation among Filipino families at 59.3 percent in 2016 and 49.4 percent in 2017.

PSA said this is interpreted as six out of 10 families in 2016 and five out of 10 families in 2017 have at least one member who did not complete basic education.

Conversely, hunger had the least incidence at 0.3 percent in 2016 and 0.6 percent in 2017, respectively.

Among other dimensions, the following indicators had the highest incidence of deprivation in 2017:  access to health insurance (health and nutrition; ownership of assets (housing, water and santitation); and freedom from  underemployment (employment).

Based on the structure of the index, families are identified to be multidimensionally deprived if they register lack of access to or experience at least four of the 13 indicators.

In 2017, its has been estimated that 17.3 percent of Filipinos are multidimensionally deprived. This was lower compared with 23.9 percent in 2016.

In terms of the intensity of deprivation, Filipinos were found to be lacking access to 41.2 percent of the indicators in 2017 and 43.2 percent of the indicators in 2016.