University of Oxford Press Release – Both Costa Rica and El Salvador launched a national Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) on the same day, October 29th.

Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) co-founder John Hammock and Outreach Technical Director Adriana Conconi participated in these launches, John Hammock in Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, and Adriana Conconi in San Salvador. In their remarks the OPHI representatives stressed both the academic validity and robustness of the measure and its potential for impacting people who live in poverty through better and more targeted social policies.

The President of Costa Rica, Mr. Luis Guillermo Solís, was joined by Second Vice President Ms. Ana Helena Chacón and Human Development Minister Mr.Carlos Alvarado in presenting the new measure to the country. The President stressed that the MPI will be used to reduce extreme poverty by allowing the government to target government resources to those that need it. He also stressed that the MPI was the result of a strong partnership between the Government, the private sector through Horizonte Positivo and OPHI.

The Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2015/2016, produced jointly by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, details findings from the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for the first time.

While the report details a decline of those living in global poverty, reclassified as living on $1.90 or less a day, it stresses that ‘Pockets of very deep and multidimensional poverty continue to persist’ and emphasises that ‘more attention is needed to the non-income dimensions of development’ in order to ‘sustainably end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity’.

The GMR explores multidimensional poverty measurement and profiles the MPI as a possible implementation. In particular, it highlights how the MPI can be broken down to reveal the different types of deprivation faced by the poor across different regions of countries, noting that ‘Breaking down poverty by dimension provides policy makers with localized information for reducing multidimensional poverty’.

The report describes how, according to recent updates of the Global MPI, Niger is the country with the highest rates of multidimensional poverty, while the poorest subnational region in the world is Salamat in southeast Chad, where nearly 98% of inhabitants are MPI poor. The region with the highest deprivation in nutrition is Affar in Ethiopia, and that with most child mortality is Nord-Ouest in Cote d’Ivoire. Karamoja in Uganda is the most deprived region for sanitation, and Wad Fira in Chad for drinking water, electricity and years of schooling.

The report also highlights how several countries have already implemented their own multidimensional poverty measures, noting that ‘as the post-2015 process unfolds, demand for harmonized multidimensional poverty assessments at the country and global levels is likely to rise.’

The Global MPI is an internationally-comparable measure of acute poverty covering more than 100 developing countries. It has been calculated by OPHI and published in the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report since 2010. Overall, 1.6 billion people are multidimensionally poor according to the Global MPI, with the largest global share in South Asia and the highest intensity in Sub-Saharan Africa.