Measuring the Unmeasurable Socio-Economic Conditions and Multidimensional Poverty of Indigenous People: Datasets from the Poorest Region of Luzon, Philippines

Indigenous people are one of the most vulnerable, ignored, and marginalized sectors in the society. Poverty is the oldest social problem that ever existed and is difficult to counter. It is multidimensional and unmeasurable, particularly for our Indigenous people, the Agta Tabangnon. Indigenous people studies are qualitative in nature while poverty studies are usually generic, exposed to large sampling errors, and intended for countrywide decisions. Thus, measuring poverty for specific tribes at complete enumeration on a multifaceted disaggregation is critical for economic development. There is no specific comprehensive census for indigenous people to cover the multidimensional aspects of their way of life, but we are resourceful in generating useful multidimensional data from our partners. The local is situated in the poorest district, of the poorest province, in the poorest region of Luzon, Philippines. The datasets contain multidimensional poverty indicators that are readily usable, and complementary analytics to visualize the data. It may serve as a basis for measuring the poverty of IPs from different regions and countries. By utilizing the data, further empirics, regressions, and econometric modeling can be conducted. It can be freely used to target policies to address tribal multifaceted poverty that requires different interventions for economic development.