Multidimensional Poverty Indices: A Critical Assessment

Multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis is evolving rapidly. Notably, it has informed the publication of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimates in the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme since 2010, and the release of national poverty measures in Mexico, Colombia, Bhutan, the Philippines and Chile. The academic response has been similarly swift, with related articles published in both theoretical and applied journals. The high and insistent demand for in-depth and precise accounts of multidimensional poverty measurement motivates this book, which is aimed at graduate students in quantitative social sciences, researchers of poverty measurement, and technical staff in governments and international agencies who create multidimensional poverty measures. The book is organized into four elements. The first introduces the framework for multidimensional measurement and provides a lucid overview of a range of multidimensional techniques and the problems each can address. The second part gives a synthetic introduction of 'counting' approaches to multidimensional poverty measurement and provides an in-depth account of the counting multidimensional poverty measurement methodology developed by Alkire and Foster, which is a straightforward extension of the well-known Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures that had a significant and lasting impact on income poverty measurement. The final two parts deal with the pre-estimation issues such as normative choices and distinctive empirical techniques used in measure design, and the post-estimation issues such as robustness tests, statistical inferences, comparisons over time, and assessments of inequality among the poor.

Multidimensional Poverty and Its Discontents

Poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon that has always existed historically. In addition to discussions of poverty issues, aspects of poverty measurement are essential topics. A prominent poverty measurement system is the unidimensional measurement based on poverty line income (PLI). Therefore, the use of multidimensional poverty measurements is proposed, specifically the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), in assessing poverty, including non-monetary aspects. This study discusses the concept of unidimensional and multidimensional poverty measurement and the implementation of these concepts in Malaysia during the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, it aims to contribute to the public debate on COVID-19 policy responses by quantifying the potential impact on global multidimensional poverty using the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which captures concurrent or overlapping deprivation at the household level. This study recommends policies by which members of the community and industry experts would be included in the poverty reduction program, in line with Maslow’s requirements. Overall, this research focuses on planning and orienting policy responses from a multidimensional perspective that integrates health, social and economic goals.

This paper explores the axiomatic foundation of multidimensional poverty indices. Departing from the income approach which measures poverty by aggregating shortfalls of incomes from a pre-determined poverty-line income, a multidimensional index is a numerical representation of shortfalls of basic needs from some pre-specified minimum levels. The class of subgroup consistent poverty indices introduced by Foster and Shorrocks (1991) is generalized to the multidimensional context. New concepts necessary for the design of distribution-sensitive multidimensional poverty measures are introduced. Specific classes of subgroup consistent multidimensional poverty measures are derived based on sets of reasonable axioms. This paper also highlights the fact that domain restrictions may have a critical role in the design of multidimensional indices.

As awareness of the limitations of relying solely on income to measure poverty has become more widespread, attention has been increasingly focused on multi-dimensional approaches, to the point where the European Union (EU) has adopted a multidimensional poverty and social exclusion target for 2020. The rationale advanced is that the computation of a multidimensional poverty index is an effective way of communicating in a political environment, and a necessary tool in order to monitor 27 different national situations. In contrast with the rather ad hoc way in which the EU 2020 poverty target has been framed and rationalized, the adjusted head count ratio applied here has a number of desirable axiomatic properties. It constitutes a significant improvement on union and intersection approaches and allows for the decomposition of multidimensional poverty in terms of dimensions of deprivation and socio-economic attributes. Since understanding poverty as multidimensional does not necessarily require constructing a multidimensional poverty index, on the basis of our analysis we provide a more general consideration of the value of developing a multidimensional index of poverty for the EU.

Poverty is a complex issue that involves more than just income levels, affecting various aspects of life such as health, education, and living conditions. The ongoing discussion about how to measure poverty, whether through absolute or relative terms, reflects the challenges in assessing it. Absolute poverty is based on a set standard that focuses on meeting basic needs for survival, while relative poverty looks at income disparities within a society. This study explores existing research on multidimensional poverty and examines the debate between absolute and relative poverty measures, considering their respective advantages and disadvantages. A notable conclusion from the research is that multidimensional poverty indices (MPIs), like the Multidimensional Poverty Index, provide a broad view of deprivation by including multiple factors. MPIs help policymakers design more targeted interventions in areas such as education, healthcare, and living standards. However, absolute poverty measures, such as the World Bank’s $1.90-per-day threshold, are still essential for tracking extreme poverty in developing nations, offering a clear benchmark for international comparisons. In contrast, relative poverty measures are particularly relevant in wealthier nations, where inequality and social exclusion are more prominent factors in poverty. This study highlights gaps in how these different approaches are integrated and calls for further research to improve models that address both absolute and relative poverty. The findings suggest that combining multidimensional, absolute, and relative poverty measures is important for fully understanding poverty and creating effective strategies to reduce it, adapted to the needs of specific regions and contexts.

The objective of this paper is to design a multidimensional poverty index, based on the Alkire-Foster (AF) method, to identify people vulnerable to COVID-19 and risk factors. The use of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) dataset has led to the choice of the following dimensions: Education, Hygiene, Staying at home, Physical distance, and recovery capacity. Each dimension is composed of indicators found in the global multidimensional poverty index. The findings show that 61.4% of Senegalese are vulnerable to COVID-19 because they suffer deprivation in at least a third of the indicators. Also, among the vulnerable 47.05% are poor according to the wealth index. The deprivation in electricity, housing, sanitation, and cooking fuel are the most important risk factors in the Senegalese context. The regions located in the South and East are those where the populations are more vulnerable. However, the number of confirmed cases is higher in the northern and western regions where there are fewer vulnerable people. In these regions, the greatest risk factor is promiscuity. Difficulty in observing physical and social distance and having a suitable living environment are major factors of vulnerability to emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19 in a developing country like Senegal.

BackgroundAlthough global poverty rates have declined in the last decade, the fall in the Asia-Pacific region has been slow relative to the rest of the world. Poverty continues to be a major cause of poor maternal and newborn health, and a barrier to accessing timely antenatal care. Papua New Guinea has one of the highest poverty rates and some of the worst maternal and neonatal outcomes in the Asia-Pacific region. Few studies have investigated equity in antenatal care utilization in this setting. We explored equity in antenatal care utilization and the determinants of service utilization, which include a measure of multidimensional poverty in Papua New Guinea.MethodsTo explore the association between poverty and antenatal care utilization this study uses data from a ten-cluster randomized controlled trial. The poverty headcount, average poverty gap, adjusted poverty headcount, and multidimensional poverty index of antenatal clinic attendees are derived using the Alkire-Foster method. The distribution of service utilization is explored using the multidimensional poverty index, followed by multivariate regression analyses to evaluate the determinants of service utilization.ResultsThe poverty headcount was 61.06%, the average poverty gap 47.71%, the adjusted poverty headcount 29.13% and the average multidimensional poverty index was 0.363. Further, antenatal care utilization was regressive with respect to poverty. The regression analyses indicated that older women; being a widow (small number of widows (n = 3) asserts interpreting result with caution); or formally employed increase the likelihood of accessing antenatal care more often in pregnancy. Travelling for over an hour to receive care was negatively associated with utilization.ConclusionThis study indicated high levels of multidimensional poverty in PNG and that ANC utilization was regressive; highlighting the need to encourage pregnant women, especially those who are economically more vulnerable to visit clinics regularly throughout pregnancy.

This electronic document is a "live" template and already defines the components of your paper [title, text, heads, etc.] in its style sheet.One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world quoted Malala Yousafzai.And to facilitate this, all one needs is a school.Today, the role of the school from being just a four walled structure has enlarged to accommodate a larger perspective which includes a myriad of activities encompassing the overall development of the child.Apart from basic education, a host of pre-requisites have become the normbe it the plethora of activities related to sports, or activities related to the development of the creative genius, or activities intending to develop the overall personality including Emotional Quotient and the Intellectual Quotient of the child.Education today, albeit, does concentrate on teaching and learning nevertheless, the focus and the selling point has now shifted to the availability of facilities.Thus, with the array of schools today, showcasing their infrastructure and facilities in our visible universe, the choices for a parent to enroll their young minds are superfluous.There are schools which are of international stature and those who are not international, aspire to be one.Then come the residuals -the municipal run schools, often alleged to be overlooked by both the enrollers and the facilitators.And yet they have an audience -the marginals for whom education is a virtue and getting it completed in the limited available options is an obligation.Often symbolized as a place for education for those with limited financial viabilities, do these institutions necessarily mirror poverty and insignificance?Are these schools sustainable and guarantee the development of the child to compete in the ever challenging environ of today's world?Do they have the infrastructure facilities which can bring out holistic development of the child?We put this to test by examining these schools run by the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai, where several schools were visited and examined under various indicators such as Classroom Infrastructure, Teaching Infrastructure and other collaterals for a school.To do this differently we used Oxford and UNDPs (United Nations Development Programme) Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index approach -a concept used in Macro Economic Analysis to calculate the Poverty Index and Depravation of households in a country.We remodeled this economic concept to calculate the depravation index of these BMC run schools in the Mumbai region.The results obtainedthough not startling yet reaffirming, indicated that most of these schools can be classified as less deprived withstanding the fact that they do provide what they set out to do -that is basic education.

Paper 2: Individual Specific Weighting Scheme to a Multidimensional Poverty Measure Abstract Weights in the estimation of multidimensional poverty have a central role by showing the relative importance of dimensions. This paper proposed two differentweighting schemes: endowment and distributional based weighting schemes.The later weighting scheme gives more weight to the dimension with small number of deprived individuals. On the other hand, the endowment based weighting scheme gives more weight to the dimension with large number of deprived individuals. The proposed weighting schemes considerboth distributional equity and simultaneous deprivations of indicators. Using the Ethiopian rural household survey (ERHS) data for the year 2004, the paper compared the proposed weighting schemes with the equal weighting scheme approach. The empirical result showed that, the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) estimation using endowment based equity weight has a lower estimate than the equal weighting approach. This happened because the indicators that have a small number of deprived individuals have got a higher weight under the equal weighting approach.

This paper states the need to design a multidimensional poverty index for the Latin America region (LA-MPI) that can monitor poverty trends in a cross-country comparable way, yet is also relevant to the particular regional context. We review the region's rich experience with multidimensional poverty measurement, as well as Europe's experiences with multidimensional measurement. We set a number of requirements for the LA-MPI to satisfy and specify the methodological criterions necessary to fulfill such requirements. Drawing from the review, we outline an LA-MPI composed of five dimensions: basic consumptions, education, health, housing and basic services, and work. We list the indicators within those dimensions that are desirable, as well as what indicators are feasible given existing data constraints.

Foremost in the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) of the 2030 Agenda, is the goal of achieving “No Poverty”. With nearly a decade yet to go, it is imperative to know the true nature and extent of poverty so that steps can be taken to eradicate poverty in all its forms. Multidimensional Poverty is a problem that persists on a larger extent in a developing country such as India, particularly among its women. The study uses the Demographic Health Survey data – India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a nationwide survey conducted with a representative sample of women aged 15 to 49 throughout the country, to shed light on the nature and extent of deprivations faced by them. The deprivations faced by the women are measured along the dimensions of education, health and standard of living as per the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) jointly developed by UNDP (United Nations Development Program) and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). Findings reveal that one-fifth of women in India are multidimensionally poor. Further subgroup decomposition reveals that higher levels of deprivations are found in women living alone, with higher age, having more number of children, widowed or divorced, husbands having multiple wives, those having more than one union and married before the legal age of marriage. The Government needs to focus its attention on the most deprived groups of women. Based on the nature and the extent of deprivations that they face, appropriate measures must be taken to bring them out of their destitution.

The main goal of this chapter is to undertake a multidimensional poverty analysis in relation to five southern Mediterranean countries, namely Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. We rely on a broader concept of poverty by considering the deprivations in women’s educational attainments, the possession of durable goods and the consequences of housing conditions, each of which we operationalize by making use of recent developments in multidimensional poverty measurement. This analysis is based on an axiomatic approach to poverty and on the use of stochastic dominance tools to achieve robust results that do not hinge on the choice of poverty line and weighting scheme. Our findings provide comparisons over time for each country and between countries that cannot be obtained when each dimension of poverty is analysed separately, as the approaches take into account the correlations which may exist between different kinds of poverty. Furthermore, in contrast to rankings drawn from cardinal poverty measures (for example, from the Multidimensional Poverty Index), multidimensional tests make it possible to nuance the performance levels reached by certain countries.

People with disabilities are more likely than individuals without disabilities to face higher levels of deprivation and multidimensional poverty, and those deprivations might be associated with the extra costs of living with a disability. However, there has not been an analysis of how multidimensional poverty measures are related to the extra costs of disability or whether these measures can be used as a proxy of the standard of living in the analysis of the extra costs of disability. This paper aims to analyse whether multidimensional poverty measures can be used to study the extra costs of disability and, based on the capability approach, how multidimensional poverty is related to the extra costs of disability. This paper discusses theoretical, technical, and methodological aspects to be considered when studying the relationship between extra costs and multidimensional poverty, and we used data from Chile and Nigeria to illustrate this relationship. We conclude that when analysing the extra costs of disability, multidimensional measures might be an option; however, it is necessary to clearly stablish the relationship among income, deprivation, and the extra costs of disability.

ObjectivesTo identify the chronic health conditions associated with multidimensional poverty.DesignCross-sectional study of the nationally representative Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.SettingAustralian population in...