A record 13.5 crore people moved out of multidimensional poverty between 2015-16 and 2019-21 as per NITI Aayog’s Report ‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023’.
Key points
- Based on the latest National Family Heath Survey [NFHS-5 (2019-21)], this second edition of the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) represents India’s progress in reducing multidimensional poverty between the two surveys, NFHS-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-21). It builds on the Baseline Report of India’s National MPI launched in November 2021.
- The National MPI measures simultaneous deprivations across the three equally weighted dimensions of health, education, and standard of living that are represented by 12 SDG-aligned indicators.
- These include nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal health, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, and bank accounts. Marked improvement is witnessed across all the 12 indicators.
- India has registered a significant decline of 9.89 percentage points in number of India’s multidimensionally poor from 24.85% in 2015-16 to 14.96% in 2019-2021.
- The rural areas witnessed the fastest decline in poverty from 32.59% to 19.28%.
- During the same period, the urban areas saw a reduction in poverty from 8.65% to 5.27%.
- Uttar Pradesh registered the largest decline in number of poor with 3.43 crore people escaping multidimensional poverty.
- The fastest reduction in the proportion of multidimensional poor was observed in the States of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan.
- Between 2015-16 and 2019-21, the MPI value has nearly halved from 0.117 to 0.066 and the intensity of poverty has reduced from 47% to 44%.
