The 2008 NDHS explored women’s empowerment in terms of control over cash and earnings, among other factors. In order to assess control over earnings, currently married women with cash earnings in the
12 months before the survey were asked during who usually decides how the money she earns will be used: mainly the woman herself, mainly her husband, or the woman and her husband jointly.
Overall, half (49.8 percent) of currently married women with cash earnings decide themselves how their earnings are used, while 44.7 percent say that they decide jointly with their husband.
The extent of women’s participation in the family’s decision-making can also be measured by the amount of control they have over the use of their husband’s cash earnings. Almost two-thirds (62.7 percent) of currently married women whose husbands receive cash earnings report that decisions about the use of the husband’s earnings are made jointly by the husband and wife. The 2008 NDHS results also showed that 24.3 percent of women say that they themselves are the ones who mainly decide how their husbands’ earnings are used.
Technical Notes:
A population pyramid , also called an age structure diagram , is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a population, which forms the shape of a pyramid when the population is growing. It is also used in Ecology to determine the overall age distribution of a population; an indication of the reproductive capabilities and likelihood of the continuation of a species. It typically consists of two back-to-back bar graphs, with the population plotted on the X-axis and age on the Y-axis, one showing the number of males and one showing females in a particular population in five-year age groups.
Males are conventionally shown on the left and females on the right, and they may be measured by raw number or as a percentage of the total population.
The sex ratio is the ratio between the number of males and the number of females, express in number of women per one hundred men.
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NATIONAL STATISTICS OFFICE—REGIONAL OFFICE I
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Email Address: nso.region1@pldtdsl.net
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Ilocos Region recorded a total population of 4.55 million persons in the 2007 Census of Population, 2.30 million were males and 2.25 million, females. Among the four provinces of the region, Pangasinan had the largest population, contributing 58 percent to the total regional population (1.34 million, males and 1.30, females).
Source: *2000 Census-based
**2007 Census of Population
Derived from the 2000 Census-based projections, the life expectancy at birth for females is longer by 6.35 years than the life expectancy at birth for males which is estimated at 68.37 years.
The age-sex distribution of the population showed more males than females in age groups 0 to
49 years. Females outnumbered their male counterparts in the older age groups (50 years old and over). This resulted to a sex-ratio of 102 males over 100 females.
Based on the final results of the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), 54.2 percent of married women in the Ilocos region were using family planning. More than one third (36.4 percent) used a modern method and 17.8 percent were using a traditional method. The pill (17.7 percent) and female sterilization (10.8 percent) were the most commonly used nethods.