On October 7, 2021, a new analysis on global multidimensional poverty namely ‘Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)’ 2021 was released which was produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). Click here
- India has a maximum number of people, 381 millions, living in multidimensional poverty.
What is in the report?
The report examined the level and composition of multidimensional poverty across 109 countries covering 5.9 billion people and presents an ethnicity/race/caste disaggregation for 41 countries.
- It states that disparities in multidimensional poverty among ethnic groups are consistently high across many countries and in nine ethnic groups more than 90% of the population is living in poverty.
Top 5 countries with largest number of people living in multidimensional poverty:
According to the report, the top five countries with the largest number of people living in multidimensional poverty are as follows:
i.India (2015/16) at 381 millions
ii.Nigeria (2018): 93 million
iii.Pakistan (2017/18): 83 million
iv.Ethiopia (2019): 77 million
v.Democratic Republic of the Congo (2017/18): 56 million.
Indian Scenario:
i.In India, 5 out of 6 multidimensional poor people are from lower tribes or caste.
ii.The Scheduled Tribe (ST) accounts for 9.4% of the population and is the poorest with 65 million of the 129 million people living in multidimensional poverty. They account for about one-sixth of all people living in multidimensional poverty in India.
iii.ST is followed by the Scheduled Caste (SC) group with 94 million of 283 million people living in multidimensional poverty representing 33.3%.
iv.27.2% of the Other Backward Class (OBC) group i.e. 160 million of 588 million people lives in multidimensional poverty
Key Points:
i.1.3 billion people are multi dimensionally poor. About half (644 million) are children under age 18.
ii.Nearly 85% live in Sub-Saharan Africa (556 million) or South Asia (532 million).
iii.More than 67% live in middle-income countries.
iv.Among the 1.3 billion multi dimensionally poor people, almost two-thirds (836 million) live in households in which no female member has completed at least six years of schooling.
- These 836 million people live mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa (363 million) and South Asia (350 million).
- Seven countries account for more than 500 million of them: India (227 million), Pakistan (71 million), Ethiopia (59 million), Nigeria (54 million), China (32 million), Bangladesh (30 million) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (27 million).
ii.One in six multi dimensionally poor people (207 million) across 108 countries live in female-headed households.
Recent Related News:
i.In accordance with the report titled ‘Uncertain Pathways: How gender shapes the experiences of children on the move’ by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the number of persons living outside their birth country or citizenship reached a record high of 281 million in 2020, representing 3.6% of the global population. In this, 36 million of them were recorded as children.
About United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):
Establishment– 1965
Administrator– Achim Steiner
Headquarters– New York, United States
