An environmentally-augmented Multidimensional Poverty Index: The Case of Madagascar

Monday, 1st week, Michaelmas 2022 

The continuing degradation of the environment, which constitutes a major threat to human life, urges scientists to find new reliable methods to measure the association between human well-being and the state of the environment. There is a clear nexus between human poverty and environmental issues. They have been identified as acute and urgent overlapping policy issues which demand good measures to address them jointly. At the same time, considerable research has focused on analysing the relationship between development or poverty and the environment, in particular with a focus on monetary poverty, food security, livelihoods, and other ecosystem services. This paper seeks to contribute to this policy and research work by providing a discussion of overlaps between multidimensional poverty levels and different environmental aspects and issues; and by building a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) which integrates an environmental dimension and respective indicators. Using Madagascar as a case study, we focus on forest, air quality, cyclones, earthquakes, and fire, which we use to construct indicators reflecting environmental deprivations. For this, we are merging MICS and DHS household datasets with spatial environmental data.

Speakers: Professor Sabina Alkire, Alexandra Fortacz, Frank Volmer and Herizo Andrianandrasana, OPHI