The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures multidimensional poverty in over 100 developing countries, using internationally comparable datasets and is updated annually. The measure captures the severe deprivations that each person faces at the same time using information from 10 indicators, which are grouped into three equally weighted dimensions: health, education, and living standards. It identifies individuals as poor if they are deprived in one-third or more of these indicators and measures the intensity of their poverty based on the percentage of the indicators in which they are deprived. The MPI provides insights into who is poor and how they experience poverty, offering a comprehensive understanding of poverty dynamics. It allows for comparisons across various administrative levels and reveals how different groups and countries experience poverty through the range of indicators.
According to the latest global MPI data, 1.1 billion people (out of 6.1 billion across 110 countries) are still living in acute multidimensional poverty. Almost two-thirds of the multidimensionally poor (730 million) people live in middle-income countries (MICs). However, poverty disproportionately affects people in low-income countries (LICs), which make up only 10 percent of the population covered by the global MPI, but are home to 34.7 percent (387 million) of the multidimensionally poor. Moreover, five out of six poor people live in Sub-Saharan Africa (47.8 percent) or South Asia (34.9 percent).
However, the latest MPI data shows that poverty reduction is possible, as 25 countries successfully halved their global MPI values within 15 years. In 79 of the 81 countries with trend data, MPI had decreased between countries’ first and last measurements.
Multidimensional poverty index (latest value)
Annualized Change Incidence
Source: UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2023.
2023 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Unstacking global poverty: Data for high impact action. New York.
2023 MPI Tables 1 and 2 (XLS)
Note: The absolute annualized change is the difference in a poverty measure between two years, divided by the number of years between surveys. The values presented in the map have been calculated using measurements of the first and last year.
Poverty measures that only consider income can underestimate poverty. In many countries (more than 40 out of the 61 analyzed in the Global MPI report 2023), the incidence of multidimensional poverty is higher than the incidence of monetary policy (according to the World Bank measure at $2.15 per day). In Chad, Guinea and Mali, it is 50 percentage points higher.
Source: UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2023.
2023 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Unstacking global poverty: Data for high impact action. New York.
2023 MPI Tables 1 and 2 (XLS)
Notes: Extreme monetary poverty refers to the World Bank indicator monetary poverty headcount ratio at PPP $2.15 a day.
For countries displayed in this chart, the difference between the MPI survey year(s) and monetary poverty survey year does not exceed 3 years.
Globally 84% of all MPI poor people living in rural areas. Overall, multidimensional poverty tend to be both more prevalent and more intense in rural areas compared to urban areas.
The experience of multidimensional poverty varies significantly across countries. For instance, in Malawi, Liberia, Namibia, female-headed households are significantly poorer than those living male-headed households with the gender gap in the incidence of poverty exceeding 8 percentage points. But the opposite is also true for other countries such as the Gambia, Senegal, Nigeria, where male-headed households are poorer. However, measuring poverty at household level alone does not allow to capture the extent to which women, men, boys and girls experience poverty differently within the same household. As a way forward, one can index eligible persons within each household to analyze ‘individual indicators’ (e.g. years of schooling, nutrition, school attendance) by gender, as was done in the Global MPI report 2021 (2021 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste and gender.)
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