Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
What you should know about this indicator
- The Multidimensional Poverty Index is obtained by multiplying two values: the share of people who are multidimensionally (MPI) poor and the intensity of multidimensional poverty among the MPI poor. A larger figure represents a higher level of poverty.
- Being MPI poor means that a person is deprived in a third or more of ten indicators, grouped into three dimensions: health (using two indicators: nutrition, child mortality), education (using two indicators: years of schooling, school attendance) and living standards (using five indicators: cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets).
- Households are assessed as being deprived in a given indicator if they do not meet a certain threshold for that indicator. For instance, a household is deprived in the Years of schooling indicator if no household member has completed six years of schooling. A person is considered deprived in the Cooking fuel indicator if they cook using solid fuel, such as dung, agricultural crops, wood, charcoal, or coal. The thresholds for each indicator are published by OPHI in their methodological notes.
- The individual indicators are not weighted equally: When adding up the number of indicators in which a person is deprived, some count for more than others. Health and education indicators are given a weight of 1/6, while the indicators within the living standards dimension are given a weight of 1/18. This means that the three dimensions – health, education and living standards – have an equal weight in the total of one-third each.
- If the household survey data being used is missing any of the 10 indicators, that indicator is dropped from the calculation. The weights are then adjusted so that each dimension continues to be given a weight of one-third. MPI poverty estimates are only calculated if at least one indicator in health and education dimensions is available, and if up to four indicators in the living standards dimension are available.
- The intensity of multidimensional poverty is calculated as the average share of indicators in which those counted as MPI poor are deprived (using the same weights to calculate the average). This is an important complementary measure to the share of the population who are MPI poor (the incidence of MPI poverty).
- An example given by the researchers who calculate the MPI data serves to illustrate this well: "Imagine two countries: in both, 30% of people are poor (incidence). Judged by this piece of information, these two countries are equally poor. However, imagine that in one of the two countries poor people are deprived —on average— in one-third of the dimensions, whereas in the other country, the poor are deprived —on average— in two-thirds. By combining the two pieces of information -the intensity of deprivations and the proportion of poor people- we know that these two countries are not equally poor, but rather that the second is poorer than the first because the intensity of poverty is higher."
- The Multidimensional Poverty Index, being the product of the incidence and intensity of multidimensional poverty, reflects both.
- This variable is a harmonized over time (HOT) estimate. This harmonization seeks to make two or more MPI estimations comparable by aligning the indicator definitions in each survey. Look for the current margin estimate (CME) to see the most recent survey data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)”, part of the following publication: Joe Hasell, Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Pablo Arriagada (2022) - “Poverty”. Data adapted from Alkire, Kanagaratnam and Suppa. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/multidimensional-poverty-index-mpi-hot [online resource]
How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Alkire, Kanagaratnam and Suppa (2024) - The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2024 – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Full citation
Alkire, Kanagaratnam and Suppa (2024) - The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2024 – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) – National, Harmonized over time” [dataset]. Alkire, Kanagaratnam and Suppa, “Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2024” [original data]. Retrieved November 11, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/multidimensional-poverty-index-mpi-hot