NITI Aayog said on July 17 that it is estimated that 135 million Indians moved out of ‘multidimensional poverty’ – a measure of deprivation beyond money – between 2015-16 and 2019-21. The year ranges are in line with the previous two rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), on which the calculations are based. Mint explains.
What is ‘multidimensional poverty’?
Poverty is traditionally measured through money using income and consumption. But it is possible to transcend (or progress through) monetary Poverty line While lagging behind on other basic needs. The United Nations refers to this in its Sustainable Development Goals, saying that it aims to halve the share of people living in poverty “in all dimensions” by 2030.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures indicators of education, health and standard of living. The annual Global MPI of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was introduced in 2010. NITI Aayog came out with an Indian version in 2021 with a slightly different methodology, which means the two cannot be compared.
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What are the conclusions?
NITI Aayog’s update shows that a quarter of Indians were multidimensionally poor (MDP) in 2015-16, a number that fell to 15% in 2019-21. Bihar saw the biggest decline (51.9% to 33.8%), followed by Madhya Pradesh (36.6% to 20.6%) and Uttar Pradesh (37.7% to 22.9%). The southern states were already doing well, so their decline was minor. Kerala had the lowest share of MDP persons at 0.55%.
The number of MDP Indians declined by an estimated 135 million – a decline of 10 percentage points over the five years applied to the 2021 population projection. Note that the global MPI has projected India’s MDP share to be 27.7% in 2015-16 and 16.4% in 2019-21.
Is this a measure of India’s resilience during the pandemic?
no way. The national MPI and global MPI for India use data from the NFHS, which was last updated between June 2019 and April 2021. As of February 2020, fieldwork had already been completed in 22 of the 36 states and union territories, including some of the most populous states. State. Hence the MPI does not reflect any post-pandemic trend.
How is someone measured as multidimensionally poor?
For each household surveyed in the NFHS, NITI Aayog examines whether it is ‘deprived’ based on 12 criteria, of which 10 are taken from the global MPI. For example, a family is deprived of nutrition even though one member is malnourished. Each parameter is given different weightage in computing the ‘Deprivation Score’ of the household. Suppose, being undernourished matters 3.5 times more than lack of electricity. If the final weighted score is greater than 33.3% – that is, the household meets at least one-third of the criteria – then all of its members are counted as MDPs.
Is there anything else to keep in mind while reading the data?
Yes. No index is perfect: the selection, definition and importance of criteria can always be debated. It is not a measure of poverty and is only a supplement to monetary metrics.
Second, it has been argued that the MPI is a “muddle” of input, process and outcome indicators, which is undesirable (Maity and Mehrotra, The Wire, 2022). For example: electricity can be seen as an ‘input’ towards prosperity, schooling as a ‘process’, and school dropout or low BMI as an ‘outcome’. Nevertheless, the index can serve as an important policy tool as it also provides estimates at the district level.