The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was released on October 17 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
What is Multidimensional Poverty?
- The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures acute multidimensional poverty across more than 100 developing countries.
- It measures each person’s overlapping deprivations across 10 indicators in 3 equally weighted dimensions: health, education and standard of living.
- The health (Nutrition-1/6, Child Mortality-1/6) and education (year of Schooling-1/6 and School attendance-1/6) dimensions are based on two indicators each, while the standard of living is based on six indicators (Cooking fuel, Sanitation, Drinking Water, Electricity, Housing, Assets-each 1/18 points).
Key Highlights
- About 41.5 crore people exited poverty in India during the 15-year period between 2005-06 and 2019-21, out of which two-third exited in the first 10 years, and one-third in the next five years.
- The MPI value fell from 0.283 in 2005/2006 to 0.122 in 2015/2016 to 0.069 in 2019/2021, and the incidence of poverty fell from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21 in the country and that deprivations in all 10 MPI indicators saw significant reductions as a result of which the MPI value and incidence of poverty more than halved.
- Improvement in MPI for India has significantly contributed to the decline in poverty in South Asia and it is for the first time that it is not the region with the highest number of poor people, at 38.5 crore, compared with 57.9 crore in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- The Global MPI constructs a deprivation profile of each household and person through 3 dimensions and 10 indicators spanning health, education and standard of living. All indicators are equally weighted within each dimension. The global MPI identifies people as multidimensionally poor if their deprivation score is 1/3 or higher.
- Bihar, the poorest State in 2015-2016, saw the fastest reduction in MPI value in absolute terms. The incidence of poverty there fell from 77.4% in 2005-2006 to to 34.7% in 2019-2021.
- Deprivations in sanitation, cooking fuel, and housing fell the most from 2015-16 to 2019-21.
- India has yet by far the largest number of poor people worldwide at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore.
- 2/3 of these people live in a household in which at least one person is deprived in nutrition.
- There were also 9.7 crore poor children in India in 2019-2021 — more than the total number of poor people, children and adults combined, in any other country covered by the global MPI.
