Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024: Poverty amid Conflict
The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024 is now available online, produced by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). According to the report, a staggering 455 million of the world’s poor live in countries exposed to violent conflict, hindering and even reversing hard-won progress to reduce poverty.
This year’s report features original statistical research on multidimensional poverty for 112 countries and 6.3 billion people, as well as fine-grained analysis of the relationship between conflict and poverty. It includes new survey data for 20 countries.
The report found that 1.1 billion people live in acute poverty worldwide, with 40% living in countries experiencing war, fragility and/or low peacefulness according to at least one of the three widely used datasets of conflict settings.
Professor Sabina Alkire, Director of OPHI, said: “This study provides the first measured global analysis at this scale examining how many multidimensionally poor people are affected by war, fragility and low peacefulness. We found that the level of poverty in conflict-affected areas is far higher. In countries at war, over one in three people are poor (34.8%) whereas, in non-conflict-affected countries, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, it’s one in nine (10.9%). And, sadly, poverty reduction is slower in conflict settings which means that the poor in conflict settings are being left behind. These numbers compel a response: we cannot end poverty without investing in positive peace.”
Countries at war have higher deprivations compared with non-conflict settings across all ten indicators of multidimensional poverty, underscoring the devastating impact of conflict on the world’s most vulnerable populations.
In addition to the in-depth analyses of poverty in conflict settings, the latest MPI report offers nuanced insights on the lived experience of poor people and trends in poverty reduction around the world.
Since its inception in 2010, the global MPI has been instrumental as an analytical tool to identify the most vulnerable people, revealing poverty patterns within countries and over time, and enabling policy makers to target resources and design policies more effectively. Covering 112 countries and 6.3 billion people it is disaggregated by age, rural-urban area, 1,359 subnational regions and gender of the household head. All data tables, do-files, and pdf country briefings are online, as are methodological notes and an interactive databank.
Read the news item on the OPHI website.