CEDAW/C/PHI/5-6 2002).6 In 2000, the poverty incidence rose to 34.2 percent (NSO 2003a). This translates to an additional 704,000 poor families in 2000 from the 1997 level or a total of 5.2 million poor families in 2000. Critics of government claim that the problem of poverty is in, fact, greater than this. Opinion polls that report self-rated poverty ratings place the poverty figure as 16 percentage points higher than the official figure. Using more than income as an indicator, the Philippine Human Poverty Index (HPI) puts the country among the upper third (less poor) of developing countries from 1998 to 2001 (UNDP/HDR, various years). Rural Poverty 66. The situation in rural areas continues to be more serious than in urban areas. The drop in poverty incidence between 1994 and 1997 (47.0 percent to 44.4 percent) was completely negated, as the rural poverty incidence rose to 47.4 percent in 2000 (NSO 2003a). The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao has the highest poverty rate at 57.3 percent in 1997 and 68.8 percent in 2000, a fact attributable to the chronic peace and order problem that plagues the region’s economy. Poverty in rural areas remains a compelling force, which drives people to urban centers, causing housing, health and sanitation, and employment problems; or to other countries as migrant workers. Income Distribution 67. Income distribution has been deteriorating since the 1980s. NSO reports that in 1994, the Gini coefficient was 0.45; it fell to 0.486 in 1997 and 0.482 in 2000 (cited in Reyes 2003).7 During the period under review, the share in income of the poorest 30 percent was only about 8 percent while the richest ten percent had almost two-fifths of the total (39.3 percent in 1997 and 38.9 percent in 2000; NSO 2002). Improvements in income equity that could result from the land reform and poverty alleviation programs of the government have yet to be felt. Overseas Filipino Workers 68. As noted above, the financial and economic crisis in the late 1990s and succeeding years of sluggish growth have contributed to the persistent poverty in the country. Philippine households have been protected from the worst effects of the crisis by the dollar remittances of overseas Filipino workers (OFW). In 1994, government deployed more than half a million OFWs to the Middle East and Europe (BLES 2002). Since then, the country has sent off an average of 218,200 new hires, 59 percent of whom are females (POEA, cited in Alcid 2002:108). They form part of the OFW deployed yearly by the government. From 795,000 in 1995, the OFW population rose to 1.01 million in 1997, dipped to 0.9 million in 1998 as a result of the crisis, but has risen again to reach 1.06 million in 2002 (NSO 2003b). Unlike in 1996, when women accounted for but 44 percent of all OFWs, since the crisis, they make up 46 to 49 percent. Accordingly, remittances from overseas workers increased from US$3.9 billion in 1995 to $5.7 billion in 1997, plummeted to $4.9 billion in 1998, but have since risen to $6.8 billion in 1999 and a lower $6.05 billion in 2000 (BLES 2002). These remittances accounted for more than 6The NSCB estimated the annual per capita poverty threshold or the amount required to meet an individual’s food and non-food basic needs in 2000 at PhP13916, or US$315 (based on the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas [Central Bank of the Philippines] exchange rate then of PhP44.2 to US$1), or about PhP1160 ($26) per month. This means that a family of six should earn at least P6958 ($157) a month in order to satisfy the members’ basic requirements. 7The Gini ratio as a measure of income inequality is the area between the income-distribution curve (Lorenz curve) and the diagonal (the line of perfect equality coefficient is a measure of the extent of income inequality). The closer to zero the Gini ratio or coefficient is, the more equal the distribution of income (BLES, n.d.:18) 30