Health cannot be a question of income; it is a fundamental human right.
Nelson Mandela (2003)
The 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) “looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.” (UNDP/OPHI, 2019) The report compiles data from 101 countries with a total population of 5.7 billion, or 76% of the world total. According to the report, 1.3 billion people in these countries lived in multidimensional poverty.
The contribution of deprivation in health to overall multidimensional poverty takes two indicators into account as a measure for deprived households:
(1) Nutrition: An adult under 70 years of age or a child is undernourished.
(2) Child mortality: Any child under the age of 18 years has died in the five years preceding the survey.
