Multidimensional Poverty Index
Poverty is more than just low income. The MPI measures overlapping deprivations in health, education, and living standards that people experience simultaneously.
Key Insights on Multidimensional Poverty
Beyond Income Alone
The MPI captures 10 deprivations across health, education, and living standards. A person is MPI-poor if they experience deprivation in at least one-third of these weighted indicators, revealing poverty that income measures miss.
Climate and Poverty Overlap
80% of multidimensionally poor people (887 million) are exposed to climate hazards like extreme heat, flooding, or drought. Of these, 651 million face two or more concurrent hazards, creating a vicious cycle of poverty and vulnerability.
Children Bear the Heaviest Burden
Half of all multidimensionally poor people (553 million) are children under 18. Children are disproportionately affected, with one in three children globally experiencing multidimensional poverty compared to one in six adults.
Living Standards Most Deprived
The living standards dimension—covering electricity, water, sanitation, housing, cooking fuel, and assets—accounts for the largest share of deprivations. Lack of clean cooking fuel alone affects over 900 million MPI-poor people.
The 10 Indicators of Multidimensional Poverty
How the MPI measures poverty across health, education, and living standards
Key Finding: Living standards has 6 indicators (cooking fuel, sanitation, water, electricity, housing, assets), while health and education have 2 each. All three dimensions are equally weighted at 33.3% to ensure balanced measurement.
Multidimensional Poverty by Country Income Level
Headcount ratio and number of MPI-poor people across income classifications
Key Finding: Low-income countries have an average MPI poverty rate of 51.2%, meaning over half their population experiences multiple deprivations. Even in upper-middle-income countries, 7.8% (304 million people) remain multidimensionally poor.
Contribution of Each Dimension to Overall MPI
Share of total deprivations from health, education, and living standards
Key Finding: Living standards account for 48% of all deprivations experienced by the MPI-poor, followed by education (29%) and health (23%). This shows that basic infrastructure and services are the primary drivers of multidimensional poverty.
Countries with Most Multidimensionally Poor People
Top 10 countries by absolute number of MPI-poor (millions)
Key Finding: India alone accounts for 234 million multidimensionally poor people (21% of the global total). The top 10 countries contain 823 million MPI-poor people, representing 75% of all multidimensional poverty worldwide.
MPI-Poor Population Exposed to Climate Hazards
Number of concurrent climate hazards faced by the multidimensionally poor
Key Finding: Of 1.1 billion MPI-poor people, 887 million (80%) are exposed to at least one climate hazard. Critically, 309 million face 3-4 overlapping hazards simultaneously, creating extreme vulnerability to shocks and making it nearly impossible to escape poverty.
Fastest MPI Reductions (2010-2023)
Countries with largest percentage point decline in MPI headcount ratio
Key Finding: India achieved the fastest MPI reduction, cutting its headcount ratio by 16.4 percentage points between 2015 and 2021. Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Ethiopia also made remarkable progress, showing that rapid improvement is possible with targeted policies.
Understanding the MPI Methodology
How is Multidimensional Poverty Measured?
The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) identifies multiple deprivations at the household and individual levels across three equally-weighted dimensions: health, education, and living standards. It uses 10 indicators to capture these deprivations.
The Three Dimensions and 10 Indicators
- Health (33.3% weight):
- Nutrition: Any adult or child in the household is undernourished (16.7% weight)
- Child mortality: A child has died in the household in the five years preceding the survey (16.7% weight)
- Education (33.3% weight):
- Years of schooling: No household member aged 10+ has completed six years of schooling (16.7% weight)
- School attendance: Any school-aged child is not attending school up to the age at which they would complete class 8 (16.7% weight)
- Living Standards (33.3% weight):
- Cooking fuel: Household cooks with dung, wood, charcoal or coal (5.6% weight)
- Sanitation: Household has unimproved or no sanitation facility or shares a toilet (5.6% weight)
- Drinking water: Household has no access to improved drinking water or safe drinking water is at least a 30-minute walk from home (5.6% weight)
- Electricity: Household has no access to electricity (5.6% weight)
- Housing: Housing materials for floor, walls, or roof are inadequate (5.6% weight)
- Assets: Household does not own more than one of: radio, TV, telephone, computer, animal cart, bicycle, motorbike, or refrigerator, and does not own a car or truck (5.6% weight)
Who Counts as MPI-Poor?
A person is identified as multidimensionally poor if they are deprived in at least one-third (33.3%) of the weighted indicators. The intensity of poverty measures the share of indicators in which poor people are deprived on average.
Data Sources and Coverage
The 2025 Global MPI covers 109 countries representing 6.3 billion people (92% of developing regions). It uses household surveys including Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). Survey years range from 2013 to 2023-2024, with trend data available for 88 countries from 2001-2024.
Why the MPI Matters
Unlike income-based poverty measures, the MPI reflects the deprivations that poor people actually experience in their daily lives. It shows who is poor and how they are poor, enabling policymakers to design targeted interventions. The MPI is also an official indicator for SDG Target 1.2, which aims to reduce multidimensional poverty by at least half by 2030.