OPHIOxford's video: OPHI Seminar Series 2020: A journey of acute poverty: the global Multidimensional Poverty Index

This year – ten years after the launch of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) – we highlight the motivations, innovations, reactions and revisions that have shaped the global measure through the years. We then present the global MPI 2020 results produced in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report Office (UNDP HDRO). The global MPI 2020 compares acute multidimensional poverty for 107 countries in developing regions. These countries are home to 5.9 billion people, three quarters of the world’s population. Of these people, 1.3 billion people (22%) are identified by the global MPI as multidimensionally poor. About 84 percent of multidimensionally poor people live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Two-thirds of multidimensionally poor people live in middle-income countries. The global MPI 2020 analysis covers 1,279 subnational regions, and important groups such as children, and people living in urban or rural areas, together with the indicator deprivations of each group, providing a detailed image of who is poor and how they are poor. Sabina Alkire directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Her research interests and publications include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, Amartya Sen’s capability approach, Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index, and human development. She holds a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. Usha Kanagaratnam leads the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) project at OPHI. She holds a DPhil and an MSc from the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. She has extensive experience in managing and analysing large scale quantitative survey data. Her current research includes international comparative research on multidimensional poverty, education and labour markets. Earlier research focused on the determinants of geographic variation in poverty. Her previous field experience includes carrying out participatory poverty assessments in rural villages in Bangladesh, Indonesia and India.