Overcoming Poverty

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Image design: © UNDP Illuminating Inequalities: launch of the 2019 global MPI OPHI and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the key findings from the 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) of the UN in July. The global MPI 2019 offers a tool to make progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 1: to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. It compares acute multidimensional poverty for 101 developing countries, covering 76% of the world’s population. The 2019 global MPI identifies 1.3 billion people—23.1 percent—as multidimensionally poor. At the launch event on 17 July, OPHI and UNDP presented a joint report entitled Illuminating Inequalities exploring the new data. Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office (HDRO), and Sabina Alkire, Director of OPHI, introduced headlines from the report, which offers both a global and a fine-grained analysis for multidimensional poverty among children, urban and rural areas, and 1,119 subnational regions, illuminating the level and composition of poverty across 10 indicators. The report investigates inequality among the multidimensionally poor from several perspectives including using innovative methods to uncover intrahousehold inequalities; studying growth in the ‘bottom 40%’ of the multidimensionally poor; and looking into relationships with the Gini coefficient, an indicator of economic inequality. In addition, the report includes a preview of trends in 10 countries drawn from an ongoing OPHI study of over 80 countries. Joining OPHI and UNDP on the panel were Nabeela Tunis, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Sierra Leone; Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Executive Secretary of CONEVAL in Mexico; and Haishan Fu, Director of the Development Data Group from the World Bank. In a wide-ranging discussion, they touched on the importance of internationally comparable indices, multidimensional poverty measurement in a national context and the challenge of inequality. The global MPI appeared in news coverage around the world including Xinhua, The Times of India, CNA, The Nation, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel and El Pais. Read more about the launch here. Publication: here and key findings here. Global MPI resources (including databank, country briefings, data tables and do-files): here.