Data updatesWhat does poverty look like beyond income?

What does poverty look like beyond income?

Someone can live above an income poverty line and still go without electricity, clean drinking water, or schooling.

The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), from the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the UN Development Programme, counts the deprivations people face at the same time. I recently updated our 16 charts with the 2026 release, published in October, which adds new surveys for 13 countries.

The MPI looks at ten indicators in three areas, using data from household surveys: health (nutrition and child mortality), education (years of schooling and school attendance), and living standards (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets). People deprived in a third or more of the weighted indicators count as “multidimensionally poor”. You can read more about how the MPI works in our article.

The chart shows this for Nigeria, which has a new survey from 2024. About half of Nigerians live in a household without electricity, about half in one without adequate sanitation, and more than three-quarters in one that cooks with solid fuels like wood or charcoal. 12% live in a household where a child has died in the previous five years.

Explore all of the updated data in our interactive charts
Bar chart of the share of people in Nigeria deprived in each of 10 poverty indicators in 2024, where cooking fuel is the most common deprivation at 77% and child mortality is the least common at 12%. The indicators cover health, education, and living standards, and people count as multidimensionally poor if they are deprived in a third or more of these weighted indicators. Source: Alkire et al. (2026), The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2026. License: CC BY to Our World in Data.