A poverty measure that captures deprivation across multiple dimensions of life rather than income alone, identifying people who are poor in several aspects simultaneously.
- The global MPI is published jointly by the UNDP (Human Development Report Office) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
- It uses three dimensions, each equally weighted: health, education, and standard of living, broken into ten indicators (such as nutrition, child mortality, years of schooling, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets).
- A household is "multidimensionally poor" if it is deprived in at least one-third of the weighted indicators.
- The MPI value is the product of the headcount ratio (share who are poor) and the intensity of poverty (average share of deprivations the poor suffer).
- NITI Aayog publishes a National MPI for India adapted to national priorities; it complements income-based poverty lines and the concept gini coefficient.
The three dimensions (health, education, standard of living), the UNDP and OPHI authorship, and NITI Aayog's National MPI are common poverty and HDI-adjacent facts.
The MPI measures deprivation across many dimensions, not income alone; it differs from the income-based poverty line and from the Human Development Index (HDI is achievement, MPI is deprivation).
Poverty across health, education, and living standards (UNDP and OPHI); NITI Aayog runs India's National MPI.