Review by Diana Deodato
“Colleting good data is one of the most powerful tools to end extreme poverty” said the president of World Bank Jim Yong Kim, a phrase that was used by Sir Tony Atkinson on the Report of The Commission on Global Poverty. It is from this same idea – that deep data gathering can contribute to solve the poverty problem – that the Multidimensional Poverty Index is published by the Human Development Report Office (HNRO) of the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford, since 2010. This index measures “overlapping deprivations for more than 100 countries and 1200 subnational regions” in an “attempt to offer” strategies to combat the poverty that goes beyond “monetary deprivations”. In this way, the annual report tries to offer “key-perspectives” on extreme poverty in the developed countries to reach the goal of poverty eradication included on the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (SDGs).
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is divided into 3 dimensions and 10 indicators combined within those: nutrition and child mortality on the health dimension; years of schooling and school attendance on the education dimension; cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets on the living standards dimension. All these indicators have the same weight within the respective categories, nonetheless, when calculating the index, the indicators of the health and the education dimensions correspond to 1/6 each, while the indicators on the living conditions correspond to 1/18 each. In consequence, if a person has an overall score above one third (33,3%), they are considered multidimensionally poor. From this point beyond, according to their scores, profiles are drawn for families and each individual, calculated through the equation IMP= H x A (H for the proportion of people that live in multidimensional poverty and A for the average score of deprivation among multidimensional poor people).
The 2023 edition (the most recent one) comes across in a post COVID-19 pandemic world, in climate emergency and in a crisis of rising living costs, as well as with the existence of armed conflicts in almost every single continent. It seems easily deductible that those that already were vulnerable (sometimes throughout several generations) before these transformative situations would be, at this moment, in worst situations, adding to these the new poor people that emerge because of these new conditions. Although in the last 15 years, 25 countries have reduced their MPI value in half and 72 out of 81 countries (nearly 5 billion of people) have decreased, in some way, their MPI value, most data from these countries was collected before the COVID-19 outbreak, and because so, there is a call on the report for the urgency on gathering newer data.
This year’s report finds 1.1 billion poor people out of the 6.1 billion people included on the data gathering, in which, around 198 million (18%) of those live in an acute multidimensional poverty situation. The report disaggregates the data in subnational regions, age group and rural-urban areas, so that it is possible to observe where poor people live, where poverty is more intense and what groups are poorer.
Almost half of the poorest people (47,8%) live in Sub-Saharan Africa and nearly a third (34,9%) in the south of Asia. Nonetheless, it is verified that 65% of all poor people live in just 5 countries: China, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sudan, and Yemen, although the most recent data available for these countries is 5 to 11 years old, and, once again, the lack of more updated data doesn’t allow for an ideal analysis on the current situation. It is in Sub-Saharan Africa that the countries with the highest percentage of impoverished population are situated: Burundi, Central African Republic, Chade, and Niger. Multidimensional poverty affects low-income countries (not developed) disproportionately, although these are just 10% of countries that MPI uses for their data but have amongst their inhabitants 34,7% of all poor people in the world. Nevertheless, most poor people live in middle-income countries (developing countries) that is, 387 million of people (65,3%).
In this way, in the attempt to better define multidimensional poverty, the MPI calculates the incidence and the intensity of such on 110 countries, finding a relation between these two indicators: the greatest the incidence of poverty on a country, the greater is the intensity of poverty that each person suffers. While, from the 1.1 billion poor people, 438 million of those have a low deprivation score, 485 million suffer from severe poverty, that is, more than a half of poor people suffer from deprivation scores above 50% in the multidimensional poverty table. The Sub-Saharan region, as was mentioned above, is the region with the most poor people but it is also the one with the most people in a severe poverty condition, including 10 million (out of the 12 million worldwide) of the people that suffer from more than 90% percent of the deprivation rate.
Disaggregating the data from the 3 lenses: subnational regions, age groups, and rural-urban, we can understand that, with the first one, countries that have an average percentage of poverty, when data is verified in some of their subregions show percentages highly above or below the national value, that is, in certain countries poor people live concentrated in certain geographical zones. On the second lens it is visible that the age group more exposed to poverty is the one from 0-18 years old, making up half of all the poor population of the world (566 million). The regions with more poor children are, consequently, the regions with more poor people overall (Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia). On the third lens, it is understood that 84% of poor people live in rural areas, and therefore rural poverty is the most predominant globally.
With the various MPI reports, reasons for hope have been found, with a decrease on the poverty index of most countries. However, it is not possible to ascertain this tendency because of the lack of updated data after the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, there are several cases of remission in the high multidimensional poverty index that, independently of their current state, should still be seen as successful cases, such as Cambodia which, in 7 years, was able to reduce the percentage value of the MPI by -20 p.p. That means that, from 5.6 million poor people in 2014, the country has nowadays (2022) 2.8 million poor people, while the age group from 0 to 18 years-old was the one with the most positive progress, as well as most of its subnational regions.
The MPI has been useful for the verification of world poverty, revealing itself as valuable for the goal of eradicating poverty by 2030 from the SDG agenda. The reports have not just retrieved and analysed data about the deprivation and living conditions of the world population, but also provided recommendations and perspectives for the resolution of worldwide poverty.
