The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has identified 5,599,091 poor households nationwide through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), otherwise known as “Listahanan.”

The Listahanan 3 or the 3rd round of nationwide household assessment began its data collection phase, which includes the conduct of house-to-house interviews on October 2019.

It was supposed to be completed by the end of March 2020, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, its operation was temporarily suspended.

The result was only completed in the last quarter of 2021.

“As of December 2021, the Listahanan 3 database was able to determine 5,599,091 poor households from the 15,487,655 total households assessed,” DSWD said in a statement on Monday, August 1.

The data generated from the Listahanan 3 will serve as a basis for the DSWD, other national government agencies, local government units, and other stakeholders in targeting eligible beneficiaries for various social protection services and poverty reduction programs nationwide.

“Those who are asking, those who are standing in line right now at the 4Ps , and finding out when they will be able to enter the program. This is the answer. We have done the work. Our colleagues at the National Household Targeting Office (NHTO) interviewed the potential beneficiaries to determine who are still at the bottom of our society. Those poor people who want to get out of poverty by entering the 4Ps program,” DSWD Secretary Erwin Tulfo said in Filipino.

“From the Listahanan, will select those who will replace the 1.3 million beneficiaries that we will remove from the 4Ps list,” he said during the soft launch on Monday.

However, Tulfo emphasized that the selection of beneficiaries will not take place immediately.

“There is a process that needs to be followed. This (Listahanan) is just a list given by the NHTO. The 4Ps will determine who is really worthy because those identified as poor really need to be studied carefully by 4Ps. We can't let them all in. We can only accommodate so many because of the budget,” he added.

Listahanan’s primary aim is to plan a unified criterion for the identification of the poor households through scientific means.

DSWD said that the encoded information in the Listahanan was subjected to proxy means test (PMT)—a statistical model that estimates the income of families using the proxy variables indicated in the Household Assessment Form of potential beneficiaries—for the generation of the list of poor households.

It assured the public that it will continue to adhere to the data protection laws and principles to protect data subjects of the Listahanan 3 from unauthorized access, disclosure, and unlawful processing.