Gives a picture of how a province fares with other provinces in terms of percentage of its low income earners meeting a particular minimum basic need or poverty correlate.

Based on the percentages, the provinces are given a national ranking for each poverty correlate which are then used to come up for the overall rank of a province.

It focuses on the bottom 40% since the latest 1997 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) showed that more than 30 percent of the families in the Philippines fall below the poverty line.