ABSTRACT
The portrait of the Hocano families and communities will be sharpened by use of bivariate contrasts of migrant and nonmigrant families and of high and low-migration communities. The combination of low levels of income, limited agricultural development, and relatively high levels of human capital development is prototypical of areas expected to have high rates of out-migration. This chapter provides demographic and economic characteristics of the migrant and nonmigrant members of the families. It discusses patterns of migration adopted by the migrants. Migrant families rank substantially higher than nonmigrant families in overall number and quality of the family labor force. Water is a critical agricultural input in Ilocos Norte. In the low-migration communities, the availability of water enables farmers in these communities to have much higher yields than in the high-migration communities. The higher proportion of wage and salary income may indicate a higher level of proletarianization in the agricultural sector.
