Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023

As per the Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023, the number of states with less than 10 per cent people living in multidimensional poverty doubled in the five years between 2016 and 2021.

• Released by: NITI Aayog
• Title of the Report: ‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress of Review 2023’.
• Indicators: The report examines three broad indicators of multidimensional poverty — health, education, and standard of living, each comprising various sub-indicators.
• Approach used: It uses statistics from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) to capture the various dimensions of poverty in India.

Key Highlights:

In terms of Standard of Living:

• NITI Aayog Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023 shows 5 crore Indians escaped poverty between 2016 and 2021.
• Data suggests a big boost came from ‘Standard of living’
• According to the report, in 2015-16 (NFHS-4), only seven states had less than 10 per cent of their population living in multidimensional poverty — Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Goa, and Kerala.
• In 2019-21 (NFHS-5), the list had doubled to include 14 states, with the seven new additions being Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, and Uttarakhand.
• All of these states saw a significant reduction in poverty headcount ratios.

• State shown improvement:
  • Jharkhand reduced the percentage of people living under multidimensional poverty from 42 per cent in 2015-16 to 28.82 per cent in 2019-21;
  • Uttar Pradesh saw a decline from 68 per cent to 22.93 per cent, and
  • In Madhya Pradesh, multidimensional poverty dropped from 57 per cent to 20.63 per cent.

• In terms of Health: Within the health category, three sub-indicators — nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, and maternal health — showed only moderate improvement.
• In terms of education: There has been a slight reduction in the percentage of people facing deprivation on the two sub-indicators.
  • The first indicator is “Years of schooling,” where a household is considered deprived if no member has completed at least six years of schooling.
  • The second indicator is “school attendance,” which considers a household deprived if any school-age child does not attend school until completing class 8.

How did India reduce multidimensional poverty?

• The seven standard-of-living sub-indicators has shown the growth which including cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, housing, electricity, assets, and bank accounts— rather than in the indicators for health and education.

• Similarly, the percentage of individuals lacking adequate sanitation facilities dropped from 51.88 per cent to 30.13 per cent, electricity deprivation went from 12 per cent to 3.27 per cent.
• The percentage of people lacking access to banking reduced from 9.66 per cent to 3.69 per cent.
• The percentage of people experiencing deprivation in years of Schooling has marginally decreased from 13 per cent in 2015-16 to 11.4 per cent in 2019-21.