With the growing interest in reorienting economic development plans and policies toward developing resources for reducing poverty, it is important to summarize information on poverty in the Philippines and identify characteristics of the poor. A poverty profile serves this purpose and also acts as a descriptive tool for giving clues to the underlying determinants of poverty, which include economic, demographic, social and cultural factors. Although poverty profiles are insightful they are also limited by their informational content in the bivariate analysis. Here, we also consider a multivariate analysis of the determinants of per capita income, the official measure of living standards in the Philippines. Using data from the 2000 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), conducted by the Philippine National Statistics Office (PNSO), we investigate with a regression model how a particular factor affects the poverty situation conditional on the level of other potential determinants of poverty in the Philippines. Then, we generate a simulation model for predicting reductions or increases in poverty statistics that result from unit changes in selected aggregate household or community characteristics. The results described here can help further guide government policy formulation, especially in relation to poverty reduction.