Why in News?
- Recently, the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2022 was published by the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
About Global Multidimensional Poverty Index-
- The index is a major international resource that measures acute multidimensional poverty across over 100 developing countries.
- The first index was launched in 2010 by the OPHI and the Human Development Report Office of the UNDP.
- The MPI monitors deprivations in 10 indicators spanning health, education and standard of living and contains both incidence and intensity of poverty. All indicators are equally weighted within each dimension.
- The most common profile, affecting 3.9 percent of poor people, involves deprivations in 04 indicators- nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation, and housing.
- The basic philosophy of index is based on the idea that poverty is not uni-dimensional (not just depends on income and one individual may lack many basic needs such as education, health etc.), rather it is multidimensional.
- The MPI ranges from 0 to 1, and higher values means higher poverty.
- A person is multi-dimensionally poor if she or he is deprived in one third or more of the weighted indicators (out of the ten indicators). Those who are deprived in one half or more of the weighted indicators are considered living in extreme multidimensional poverty.
Major Highlights of the Index-
- Global Data- 1.2 billion people are multi-dimensionally poor.
- Nearly half of them live in severe poverty.
- About half of poor people (593 million) are children under age 18.
- The number of poor people is highest in Sub Saharan Africa (579 million), followed by South Asia (385 million). The two regions together are home to 83 percent of poor people.
- Impact of Pandemic- The data do not, though, reflect post-pandemic changes.
- As per the report, the Covid-19 pandemic could set back the progress made in poverty reduction worldwide by 3-10 years.
- The most recent data on food security from the World Food Programme mention that in 2021 the number of people living in food crises or worse increased to 193 million.
Key Findings about India-
- India has far and away the largest number of poor people globally at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore. Two-thirds of these people live in a household in which at least one person is deprived of nutrition.
- Reduction in Poverty- The incidence of poverty fell from 55.1 percent in 2005-06 to 16.4 percent in 2019-21 in the country.
- The deprivations in all 10 MPI indicators saw significant reductions as a result of which the MPI value and incidence of poverty more than halved.
- During the 15 year period between 2005-06 and 2019-21, around 41.5 crore people moved out of poverty in India.
- Improvement in MPI for India has significantly contributed to the reduction in poverty in South Asia.
- Presently, South Asia has not the lowest number of poor people than Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Relative Reduction in Poverty- The relative reduction from 2015-2016 to 2019-21 was faster, 11.9 percent a year compared with 8.1 percent from 2005-2006 to 2015-2016.
- Performance of States- Bihar, the poorest state in 2015-16, saw the fastest decline in MPI value in absolute terms.
- The percentage of poor in Bihar fell from 77.4 % in 2005-06 to 34.7 % in 2019-21. Though, in relative terms, the poorest states have not quite caught up.
- Of the 10 poorest states in 2015-2016, only one (West Bengal) have emerged out of the list in 2019-21.
- The rest states- Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan remain among the 10 poorest.
- Poverty among Children- Poverty among children reduced faster in absolute terms, even though India still has the highest number of poor children in the world.
- More than one in five children in India are poor compared with around one in seven adults.
- Reduction of Poverty Region Wise- The incidence of poverty fell from 36.6 percent in 2015-2016 to 21.2 percent in 2019-2021 in rural areas and from 9.0 percent to 5.5 percent in urban areas.