NITI Aayog, recently, launched the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report 2022-23. It revealed a significant decline in multidimensional poverty in India.
What is Multidimensional poverty? Multidimensional poverty refers to the experience of poverty that encompasses various deprivations experienced by poor people in their daily lives, such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, disempowerment, poor quality of work, the threat of violence, and living in environmentally hazardous areas, among others.
It is a more comprehensive measure of poverty that goes beyond traditional income-based measures and captures the range of different disadvantages that people experience.
The report indicates that multidimensional poverty in India decreased from 29.17% in 2013-14 to 11.28% in 2022-23, with over 24.8 crore people escaping multidimensional poverty during this period.
The report is based on the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) and uses 12 indicators to measure poverty, going beyond traditional income-based measures. The findings underscore the substantial progress in poverty alleviation efforts in India over the past decade.
The 12 indicators used in the MPI are Nutrition, Child mortality, Years of schooling, School attendance, Cooking fuel, Sanitation, Drinking water, Electricity, Housing, Assets, Household size, and Employment status.
Key findings of the report include:
Multidimensional poverty in India declined from 29.17% in 2013-14 and 15% in 2019 to 11.28% in 2022-23.
Over 24.8 crore people moved out of multidimensional poverty in India in 9 years.
Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 5.94 crore people escaping poverty, followed by Bihar at 3.77 crore and Madhya Pradesh at 2.30 crore.
All 12 indicators of MPI have shown remarkable improvement during this period.
Projecting a single-digit level by the next financial year, the authors argued that India is much ahead of the target in reducing poverty in all its dimensions by half by 2030.
Though the report did not provide estimates of several parameters, it said that initiatives like Poshan Abhiyan, Anaemia Mukt Bharat, and Pradhan Surakshit Matritya Abhiyan have helped.
The report, however, cautioned that the pace of poverty reduction is faster when levels are higher, and further fall may also be linked to externalities. Besides, the projections made in the paper are based on the National Family Health Survey for which data was collected before the pandemic and the latest estimate may not fully reflect the impact of the pandemic.
The report serves as a valuable complement to monetary poverty statistics by providing insights into the number of people experiencing simultaneous deprivations across three equally important dimensions: education, health, and standard of living.
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