At Because International, our vision is a world without material poverty where all people can flourish. While that’s great to say, how do we work to get there—both as an organization and as a world? 

One tool we are beginning to use to help us understand how we are making an impact in reducing poverty is the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). The MPI is a framework used throughout the humanitarian aid sector to define poverty and measure how many people are experiencing it and to what extent. 

Looking at the state of global poverty reported in the MPI is one way that we and other organizations can track progress in reducing it.

The Key Dimensions of Human Development 

The MPI is part of the Human Development Report (HDR) prepared yearly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report measures global human development by looking at factors like economics, health and education.

Within the HDR, the MPI focuses on defining and measuring poverty, using many different factors—not just income—to assess deprivation. In the MPI, deprivation is the lack of something needed for healthy human development, like food, water or housing.  

The 2024 MPI reported data on over 100 developing countries according to the key dimensions of health, education and standard of living. These dimensions are broken down using 10 indicators, and people experiencing deprivation in at least one-third of the indicators are classified as multidimensionally poor. 

Let’s look closer at the three dimensions and their indicators.

Health

The indicators in the Health dimension are child mortality and nutrition. This dimension measures life expectancy at birth. 

Education

The indicators in the Education dimension are years of schooling and school attendance. This dimension assesses how much formal education people have and their access to education as children.  

Standard of Living

The Standard of Living dimension has six indicators: cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing and assets. Because this dimension has more indicators than the other two, each indicator is weighted less. 

Multidimensional Poverty Index as a measure of impact

The MPI provides a standardized way to understand how many people are living in poverty and the intensity of their poverty. The dimensions and indicators define the most important contributing factors to poverty. Together, this information helps organizations see where they can make the most impact and work together to reduce poverty in a meaningful way. 

Because International is excited to begin using the MPI as a lens to ensure our work with The Shoe That Grows and with entrepreneurs around the world is driving meaningful, measurable impact. Your support continues to make all of this possible.