Creating a small scale area classification for understanding the economic, social and housing characteristics of small geographical areas in the Philippines

The Philippines is one of the most populous countries in the world. In terms of population, it ranks twelfth globally and seventh in Asia behind China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan. The estimated population of the country in 2010 was 94 million people. Using data from the Philippines 2000 Census, this paper presents a discussion of the creation of a 3‐tier hierarchical geodemographic system for the country at Barangay scale. Barangays are the smallest spatial entities in the structure of the administrative geography of the country. Most popular geodemographic systems are typically developed from continuous datasets. In this paper, we discuss how a geodemographic classification system can be created by combining categorical and continuous datasets. The first level of the Philippines geodemographic hierarchy ensures the population can be profiled broadly at Barangay level into seven super‐groups. The super‐groups are further subdivided into 24 groups and finally into 66 subgroups.