11 Dec

National Multidimensional Poverty Index, 2023

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Contents

• Background
• Key Features of India’s MPI
• Concerns

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Background:

• Historically, poverty estimation has relied on income as the sole indicator.
• However, the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), based on the Alkire-Foster (AF) methodology, captures overlapping deprivations – in health, education and living standards.
• GoI has acknowledged the significance of the global MPI under the mandate of Global Indices for Reform and Action (GIRG) initiative.
• In this context, NITI Aayog, has created an indigenized index for monitoring the performance of states and UTs in addressing multidimensional poverty in coordination with various ministries and technical partners – OPHI and UNDP.

Key features of India’s MPI:

• It captures overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards. These three
  dimensions have been given equal weights, which have further been represented by 12
  indicators. The primary data source to arrive at the numbers of MPI is the NFHS-5.

Key Highlights of the second edition of National MPI which is a follow up of baseline report published in 2021.

• Steep Decline in Poverty between 2015-16 and 2019-21, indicating success of the country’s
  commitment and action to address multidimensional nature of poverty through its multi-sectoral approach.
  • Population under multidimensional Poverty (H): 14.97% (2019-21) when compared to
    24.85% in 2015-16.
    • In absolute terms, approximately 13.5 crore Indians escaped poverty in the period, courtesy in improvements in indicators like access to cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, and bank accounts among others.
  • Poverty intensity (A) has also reduced to 44.39% (2019-21) when compared to 47.14%
    in 2015 – 16.
    • MPI = H x A = 0.066 (which was 0.117 in 2020-21)
  • Rural Areas have seen fastest decline in poverty from 32.59% to 19.28% in the period owing to improvements in states like Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.

Concerns:

• In the health category – the three indicators – nutrition, Child and adolescent mortality, and
  maternal health – showed only moderate improvement, the report showed.
• Nutritional deprivation decreased from 37% to 31%;
  • Lack of nutrition contributed close to 30% – the highest – in the overall calculation of India’s multidimensional poverty index.
• Maternal health deprivation improved from 22.5% to 19.7%; and
• Child and adolescent mortality deprivation declined from 2.69% to 2.06%.

Other indicators that didn’t record a significant decline and aided the most in keeping Indians poor include lack of years of schooling (16.65%); inadequate access to maternal health services
(11.73%), and less-than-desired school attendance (9.10%), among others.

• Cooking fuel is an area where significant improvement has taken place but close to 44% of India’s population is still deprived of it.
• Sanitation numbers have also improved, but still 30% of the population is deprived when it
  comes to sanitation services.
• Access to housing was another indicator where progress was marginal. In 2015-16, 46% didn’t have access which has come down to 41% now.

Performance at State Level:

• States with less than 10% people living in multidimensional poverty doubled in last five year. There were 7 states (Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, TN, Goa, and Kerala) in this
  category in 2015-16, which has doubled to 14 states with seven new states added including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur and Uttarakhand.
• Except for Bihar, no other state in India has more than 1/3rd of its population living under Multidimensional Poverty. However, even in Bihar’s case, the reduction in multidimensional
  poverty has been significant over the five year time period – in 2015-16, over 51.89% of people lived in multidimensional poverty, by 2019-20, the figure dropped to 33.76%.

Conclusion:

• India’s stellar progress in the National MPI between 2015-16 and 2019-21 reflects the Government’s commitment to improving the quality of people’s lives – through targeted policies, schemes, and developmental programs rolled out at both national and subnational
  levels.
• Key government schemes such as Swachch Bharat Mission (SBM), Jal Jeevan Mission, Poshan Abhiyan, Samagra Shiksha, Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojna (Subhagya), Pradhan
  Mantri Ujjwala Yojna (PMUY), Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna (PMJDY), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) and many more have contributed significantly in driving the tremendous progress highlighted in National MPI