Used ArcGIS Pro to map the sub-national spatial relationships of poverty in the Philippines, scraping socioeconomic data from the Philippine Statistics Authority and the IBON Foundation. Feature classes digitized: Polygon (choropleth map of wage gap Philippine regions), Line(island grouping boundaries), Point (5 most impoverished cities).

Data and Datasets:

• Wage Gap Data and Calculation: https://www.ibon.org/flw-regl-2412/

• Monetary conversion: $1 CAD = 40.70 PHP (as of January 2025)

• 2023 Full Year Official Poverty Statistics of the Philippines: https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/phdsd/2023%20FY%20Official%20Poverty%20Statistics%20Publication_15August2024.pdf

Most Impoverished Highly Urbanized Cities (Poverty Incidence Among Families, %):

1. Butuan:12.2

2. Iligan:11.8

3. Tacloban:10.6

4. Davao:8.8

5. Olongapo:7.5

Discussion:

Based on the choropleth map, it appears that poverty is highly concentrated in the southern region of Mindanao, especially in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (very dark shade of blue). It is also interesting to note that 3 of the top 5 most impoverished cities are based in Mindanao. Of course, there are a multitude of ways to measure poverty, and this map is an oversimplification that does not account for differences within each region, province, and island group. Rigorous socioeconomic-based analysis such as exploring how poverty disproportionately impacts people from the peasant and urban poor classes, LGBTQ+ communities, Indigenous ethnic groups such as the Moro and Igorot peoples, and so forth, will have to complement spatial analysis work like this one. Nevertheless, this is a good start, as the data is relatively recent and came from reliable and authoritative sources.