According to the report, the greatest shortages are in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 534 million people, and South Asia is home to another 389 million people. This means that five out of six poor people live in these two regions.
The study highlighted that half of the people suffering from multidimensional poverty worldwide are under the age of 18.
He noted that there was no statistically significant decrease in child poverty in more than 50 percent of the countries reporting data, suggesting it will continue to be a pressing problem, particularly in the areas of education and nutrition.
In addition, the report shows that one-third of the 1.1 billion poor (730 million people) live in middle-income countries, and details that while low-income countries account for only 10 percent of the index’s population, they account for 35 percent of all poor people live in it.
On the other hand, it is pointed out that poverty mainly affects rural areas, where 84 percent of all poor people live.
UNDP presents the Index as a stacked tower of the interconnected disadvantages of poor people with the aim of initiating action to eliminate those disadvantages.
In its latest update, the indicator estimates the values of 110 countries and shows that poverty can be reduced with the right measures.
The agency highlighted that 25 countries have successfully halved their index in 15 years, confirming that rapid progress can be made in the fight against poverty. These include Cambodia, China, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Serbia and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, other countries, such as Mexico, Madagascar, Cambodia, Peru and Nigeria, have seen poverty drop even during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of this group, Cambodia is the most encouraging example: the poverty rate fell from 36.7 percent to 16.6 percent and the number of poor halved from 5.6 million to 2.8 million, all in 7.5 years inclusive the pandemic years.
According to the UN agency, cases like Cambodia give hope that the sustainable development goal of halving poverty by 2030 is still achievable.
When this optimism was not enough, the UNDP warned that the full impact of the pandemic is yet to be seen as all the data for this period is not yet available and the immediate outlook cannot therefore be assessed.
Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office, commented that midway through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it is clear that there had been steady progress in reducing multidimensional poverty before the pandemic.
However, he qualified: “The impact of the pandemic in areas such as education is significant and may have lasting consequences.” It is imperative that we intensify our efforts to understand the sectors most affected.”
The Multidimensional Poverty Index monitors poverty reduction and takes into account factors ranging from access to education and health to living standards in terms of access to housing, drinking water, sanitation and electricity.
ro/adr