How to Build a National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

National Multidimensional Poverty Indexes (MPIs) help to identify not only who is living in poverty, but how they experience poverty. This handbook provides detailed practical guidance on how to build a technically rigorous and permanent national MPI.

UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) jointly launched a handbook How to Build a National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Using the MPI to inform the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in July, on the margins of the 2019 High Level Political Forum.

The handbook provides practical guidance for policymakers, statisticians, practitioners and others seeking to or engaged in developing a national MPI. It is also intended as a resource for academics, journalists and others interested in broadening their country’s poverty metrics, in line with the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The MPI goes beyond income as the sole indicator for poverty, by exploring the ways in which people experience poverty in their health, education and standard of living. Currently several countries are developing national MPIs, which are adapted to reflect their own specific poverty priorities in their national contexts. The handbook aims to support countries engaging in this process.

With the use of the national MPI, UNDP and OPHI hope to strengthen national capacities of policymakers, technical experts and other stakeholders to:

  • build a deeper, more holistic understanding of what poverty means in their national contexts, in complement with existing monetary measures
  • track, report and review progress in reducing multidimensional poverty, in keeping with the 2030 Agenda SDG target 1.2
  • use evidence to improve policies, reach the most severely poor and facilitate approaches to implement the SDGs that work across sectors to address the deprivations that leave people behind
  • broaden national ownership and engagement in efforts to eradicate poverty in all its forms

(UNDP/ile)

More information and download the handbook How to Build a National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Using the MPI to inform the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/poverty-reduction/how-to-build-a-national-multidimensional-poverty-index.html

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