There are a total of 270,456 households in Central Luzon categorized as poor based on the Department of Social Welfare and Development's updated list of poor families.

According to DSWD, the data came from the third-round assessment of the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction or Listahanan, an information system for identifying and locating poor households.

The number of poor families in the region are broken down as follows: Nueva Ecija, 76,691 households; Bulacan, 47,907; Tarlac, 42,159; Zambales, 36,435; Pampanga, 26,142; Bataan, 21,945; Aurora, 12,131; Olongapo City, 3,947; and Angeles City, 3,099.

DSWD Assistant Regional Director for Operations Venus Rebuldela said that 54 percent of poor households are living in urban areas across the region, while the remainder are in rural areas.

Under Executive Order 867 series of 2010, the DSWD is mandated to update the Listahanan database every four years.

With the presentation of the regional profile of the poor, Rebuldela emphasized that by using it, all social protection stakeholders will be able to correctly identify potential beneficiaries to different social protection programs and services in Central Luzon.

Since 2016, various agencies have already utilized Listahanan as the basis for implementing different social protection programs for the poor including the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, Commission on Higher Education, as well as the different local government units.

For the Listahan 3, a total of 1,512,928 households in the region were assessed through house-to-house interviews, Rebuldela said.