Previous Year Question

According to the Human Development Report 2013, approximately 53.7% of India's population was affected by Multidimensional Poverty. The report was published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the title The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) does not assess poverty solely on the basis of income or consumption expenditure but also measures deprivations in Health, Education, and Living Standards. It was jointly developed by UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and introduced in the Human Development Report 2010.

The three major dimensions of MPI and their indicators are:

1. Health: Nutrition and Child Mortality.

2. Education: Years of Schooling and School Attendance.

3. Living Standards: Cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, flooring, and asset ownership.

Each dimension carries a weight of one-third (1/3). Under MPI, a person is considered multidimensionally poor if their weighted deprivation score is at least 33.3%.

India's position in the Human Development Report 2013:

These estimates were based on data from the 2005–06 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Therefore, the figure of 53.7% was not the result of a survey conducted in 2013 but an estimate based on an earlier survey published in the 2013 report.

The MPI value is obtained by multiplying the Headcount Ratio of the multidimensionally poor population by their average weighted Intensity of Deprivation. Thus, it reflects both the proportion of the population affected by poverty and the severity of their deprivations.