Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.
Nelson Mandela (2005)
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 the standard of living to overall multidimensional poverty takes six indicators into account as a measure for deprived households:
(1) Cooking Fuel: The household cooks with dung, wood, charcoal or coal.
(2) Sanitation: The household’s sanitation facility is not improved (according to SDG guidelines) or it is improved but shared with other households.
(3) Drinking Water: The household does not have access to improved drinking water (according to SDG guidelines) or safe drinking water is at least a 30-minute walk from home, round trip.
(4) Electricity: The household has no electricity.
(5) Housing: Housing materials for at least one of roof, walls and floor are inadequate: the floor is of natural materials and/or the roof and/or walls are of natural or rudimentary materials.
(6) Assets: The household does not own more than one of these assets: radio, TV, telephone, computer, animal cart, bicycle, motorbike or refrigerator, and does not own a car or truck.
