Unstacking global poverty: Data for high-impact action

In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1 set out to overcome the greatest global challenge: ending poverty in all its forms. At the midpoint to 2030, people’s lives continue to be improved in multiple ways simultaneously.

Globally, an array of challenges impedes poverty reduction including widespread inequality, political instability and conflict, a climate emergency, COVID-19 pandemic recovery, and cost of living and other crises. There are both commonalities and specifics that cloud the way for each country.

Measures of multidimensional poverty attempt to offer clear priorities for addressing poverty, going beyond monetary deprivations. The annual global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), jointly published by the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) of the United Nations Development Program and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford since 2010, measures interlinked deprivations in health, education and standard of living that directly affect a person’s life and wellbeing.

The global MPI is the only counting-based index that measures overlapping deprivations for more than 100 countries and 1,200 subnational regions and offers a key perspective on SDG 1, while encompassing indicators related to other SDGs. The global MPI can be pictured as a stack of blocks, each of which represents a deprivation of a poor person. The goal is to eliminate deprivations so the height of the stack declines.

Who are the poorest?

The higher the incidence of poverty, the higher the intensity of poverty that poor people experience.  485 million poor people live in severe poverty across 110 countries, experiencing 50–100% of weighted deprivations. 99 million poor people experience deprivations in all three dimensions (70–100% of weighted deprivations). 10 million of the 12 million poor people with the highest deprivation scores (90–100%) live in Sub- Saharan Africa.

What deprivations do poor people experience?

824–991 million out of the 1.1 billion poor people do not have adequate sanitation, housing or cooking fuel. 600 million poor people live with a person who is undernourished in their household. Gaps in years of schooling is a cross-regional issue: In all regions except Europe and Central Asia, around half of poor people do not have a single member of their household who has completed six years of schooling.

How do monetary and multidimensional poverty compare?

In 42 out of 61 countries, more people live in multidimensional poverty based on the global MPI, than in extreme monetary poverty, based on the World Bank’s $2.15 a day measure.

How has poverty changed?

72 out of 81 countries, covering well over 5 billion people, experienced a significant absolute reduction in MPI value during at least one period. But nearly all data are from before the COVID-19 pandemic. 25 countries halved their global MPI value well within 15 years, showing that progress at scale is attainable.

What is the global Multidimensional Poverty Index?

The global MPI is a key international resource that measures acute multidimensional poverty across more than 100 developing countries. First launched in 2010 by HDRO and OPHI, the global MPI advances SDG 1 ending poverty in all its forms everywhere and measures interconnected deprivations across indicators related to SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 11.

The global MPI begins by constructing a deprivation profile for each household and person in it that tracks deprivations in 10 indicators spanning health, education and standard of living

Where do poor people live?

Across 110 countries, 1.1 billion out of 6.1 billion people are poor. Understanding where poor people live is crucial for policymaking. Roughly five out of six poor people live in Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia: 534 million (47.8 percent) in Sub-Saharan Africa and 389 million (34.9 percent) in South Asia. Some 65 percent of the remaining poor people live in just five countries: China (2014), Indonesia (2017), Myanmar (2015/16), Sudan (2014) and Yemen (2013).

More recent data for these countries would allow their global MPI value to be updated to reflect current conditions. Across countries, the incidence of poverty ranges from less than 1 percent in 21 countries to over 50 percent in 22 countries, 19 of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the poorest four: Burundi (75.1 percent in 2016/2017), Central African Republic (80.4 percent in 2018/2019), Chad (84.2 percent in 2019) and Niger (91 percent in 2012).

Which groups are the poorest?

Disaggregating poverty data by subnational region, age group and rural-urban area illuminates striking inequalities within countries and reveals what groups are being left behind.

Subnational regions

Plotting incidence and intensity of poverty for 1,281 subnational regions reveals considerable disparity, even within world regions. For example, the poorest country in the Arab States has an incidence of just over 52 percent, but 20 subnational regions have a higher incidence, up to 83.8 percent. Disaggregating by subnational region also reaffirms the troubling trend that in the places with the highest incidence of poverty, each poor person on average experiences a higher share of overlapping deprivations.

But regional patterns vary: The Arab States have a steeper curve than East Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean, while Sub-Saharan Africa, with the highest intensity, also has greater dispersion across subnational regions with incidence above 80 percent.

Children

Over half (566 million) of the 1.1 billion poor people are children under age 18. Some 54.1 percent of poor children live in Sub-Saharan Africa, making poverty reduction for these 306 million children a vital focus for the region. South Asia is home to 177 million poor children, or 31 percent of poor children. Across 110 countries, 27.7 percent of children are poor, compared with 13.4 percent of adults. This situation calls for unflagging engagement in reducing child poverty.

Rural areas

Almost 84 percent of poor people live in rural areas, and rural poverty dominates in every world region. Rural-urban disparities are glaring in South Asia, where nearly 340 million (87.5 percent) poor people live in rural areas, compared with 49 million (12.5 percent) in urban areas. While urban poverty is serious and household surveys may need to do better at capturing it, most poor people live in rural areas.

What do deprivation indicators tell us about poverty from the regional to the subnational level?

The global MPI tells a story about poverty and disparities at the regional, national and subnational levels. In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty affects an average of 49.5 percent of the population, but incidence and MPI values vary widely across countries, from 0.9 percent to 91 percent and from 0.003 to 0.601, and across sub- national regions within those countries.

For example, in Senegal (2019), where 50.8 percent of people are poor and the MPI value is 0.263, the incidence in subnational regions ranges from 18.3 percent to 85.7 percent, and MPI values range from 0.084 to 0.502.

What deprivations do poor people experience?

To end poverty in all its forms, the interlinked deprivations that poor people experience need to be addressed to reduce the intensity of poverty and thereby empower poor people to exit poverty. Recall that people living in multidimensional poverty ordinarily experience multiple deprivations simultaneously. Breaking the global MPI down by indicator reveals which overlapping deprivations are the most widespread:  Across 110 countries, 824–991 million out of the 1.1 billion poor people lack adequate sanitation, housing or cooking fuel. More than half of poor people are deprived in nutrition, electricity or years of schooling.

The number of poor people deprived in nutrition is similar in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (around 245 million). Almost 80 percent of poor people who lack access to electricity—444 million—live in Sub-Saharan Africa and are being left behind in an increasingly digital world. In all regions except Europe and Central Asia, around half of poor people live in a household where no member has completed six years of schooling, making this a vexing cross-regional issue.

How to use the global Multidimensional Poverty Index for impact?

The global MPI provides the crucial bird’s-eye view to detect acute poverty across developing countries. Incidence of poverty reveals where people live and how widespread acute poverty is within regional, national and subnational borders and among population groups. Intensity of poverty provides invaluable information on the depths of poor people’s poverty, shining light on the poorest of poor people. The global MPI is disaggregated to illuminate pockets of poverty and who is left behind. Finally, breakdown by component indicator shows what deprivations poor people experience, which can guide the choice of poverty reduction interventions to achieve the greatest impact.