India tracks progress in poverty reduction with second edition of their National MPI

India has published the first update of the National Multidimensional Poverty Index in a report entitled ‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023’.

In November 2021, India’s nodal agency tasked with measuring multidimensional poverty, NITI Aayog, launched an official National MPI for India with a report based on the National Family Heath Survey for 2015­–16 (NFHS-4). The report that was published today updates that analysis of multidimensional poverty across India with data from NFHS-5 (2019–21).

Today’s report finds the proportion of people living in multidimensional poverty in India declined by 9.89 percentage points from 24.85% in 2015–2016 to 14.96% in 2019–2021.  Rural areas reduced poverty fastest from 32.59% to 19.28%, whereas poverty in urban areas reduced from 8.65% to 5.27%.

Estimates for the 36 States and Union Territories and 707 Administrative Districts are presented in the report. The fastest reductions in the proportion of people living in multidimensional poverty were observed in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan. The MPI also shows the indicator composition of poverty for each state and district, indicating priority areas required to sustain this momentum.

The National MPI measures simultaneous deprivations across the three equally weighted dimensions of health, education, and standard of living that are represented by 12 SDG-aligned indicators. These include nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal health, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, and bank accounts. Improvements were evident in all the 12 indicators, 10 of which are used in the global MPI.

The MPI value which combines the proportion of people in poverty with the intensity of their poverty nearly halved from 0.117 to 0.066 between 2015–16 and 2019–21. The intensity of people’s poverty, the average share of their weighted deprivations, reduced from 47% to 44%. According to the results from the second edition of the National MPI for India, the SDG Target 1.2 of reducing multidimensional poverty by half by 2030 looks within reach.

For more information

Press release from Niti Aayog

Download the report from www.niti.gov.in