Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

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• Recently, the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was released.

Report highlights

• Report highlights:
  • For India:
    • Improvements:
      • As many as 41.5 crore people exited poverty in India during the 15-year period between 2005-06 and 2019-21.
        • Out of these, two-thirds exited in the first 10 years, and one-third in the next five years, according to the report.
      • It shows that the incidence of poverty fell from 55.1% in 2005/06 to 16.4% in 2019/21 in the country.
      • Deprivations in all 10 MPI indicators saw significant reductions as a result of which the MPI value and incidence of poverty more than halved.
    • Global significance of poverty reducion in India:
      • Improvement in MPI for India has significantly contributed to the decline in poverty in South Asia.
      • It is for the first time that it is not the region with the highest number of poor people, at 38.5 crore, compared with 57.9 crore in Sub-Saharan Africa.
    • State-wise data:
      • Bihar, the poorest State in 2015/2016, saw the fastest reduction in MPI value in absolute terms. 
      • Of the 10 poorest States in 2015/2016, only one (West Bengal) was not among the 10 poorest in 2019/2021. 
      • The rest— Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan —remain among the 10 poorest.
    • Challenges:
      • The report notes that the ongoing task of ending poverty remains daunting. 
      • India has by far the largest number of poor people worldwide at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore. 
        • Two-thirds of these people live in a household in which at least one person is deprived in nutrition. 
      • There were also 9.7 crore poor children in India in 2019/2021- more than the total number of poor people, children and adults combined, in any other country covered by the global MPI.
  • Globally:
    • Globally, of the total 610 crore people across 111 developing countries, 19.1% or 120 crore live in multidimensional poverty. Nearly half of them live in severe poverty.
• Report Shortcomings:
  • The report doesn’t fully assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in India as 71% of the data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-2021) relied upon for MPI were collected before the pandemic.

Challenges for India

• Levels of nutrition:
  • While poverty levels have not worsened, levels of under-nutrition are still very high. 
  • There is no marked acceleration in rate of improvement between NFHS-3 and NFHS-4 and NFHS-4 and NFHS-5. 
  • And the MPI mainly captures the pre-COVID situation because 71% of the NFHS-5 interviews were pre-COVID.
• Recent World Bank estimates:
  • According to the World Bank’s recently released report on global poverty, India is the country with the highest number of poor people.
  • Report stated that “economic upheavals brought on by Covid-19 and later the war in Ukraine” had produced “an outright reversal” in poverty reduction across the planet. 

Way Ahead

• India faces three rather acute and growing problems: 
  • Widespread unemployment, 
  • Widening inequalities and 
  • Deepening poverty
• None of these will be resolved by electoral victories. They require actual policy solutions. Without the right policies, India’s demographic dividend is looking more like a demographic bomb.

Source: TH