#82: Nepal in the MPI
Nepal fares better in the Oxford MPI health dimension, but ranks lowest in South Asia overall poverty.
Among the 104 countries, Nepal ranks 82 in the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP support. Sri Lanka (32) tops South Asia followed by Pakstan (70), Bangladesh (73), India (74) and Nepal.
UNDP’s Human Development Report for this year, to be published in late October, will be based on this new MPI method. The new method incorporates 10 indicators of poverty, and these are clustered under three dimensions— education (years of schooling and child enrolment), health (child mortality and nutrition), and standard of living (electricity, drinking water, sanitation, flooring, cooking fuel, and assets).
UNDP’s earlier reports measured poverty in terms of survival, access to knowledge and decent standard of living (overall economic provisioning).
The latest MPI is based on surveys conducted on various countries between 2000 to 2007. Nepal’s statistics are from 2006.
Nepal is better positioned than Pakistan and India in terms of years of schooling for children and enrolments. Pakistan had 32.50 percent and India had 23.99 percent deprivation in the educational dimension whereas Nepal had 21.32 percent deprivation. Sri Lanka (6.26) and Bangladesh (18.70) fared better than Nepal and other countries in the region.
In the health dimension Nepal is better than the other surveys countries in the region—Sri Lanka (35.40 percent), Pakistan (36.35), Bangladesh (34.68), and India (33.53).
In the living standard measure Nepal was better than Sri Lanka (58.34) or Bangladesh (46.81), but worse than Pakistan (31.14) or India (41.33).
For the surveyed year 2006, Nepal’s MPI value was 0.350, the highest in the region. The MPI value reflects the percentage of people who are MPI poor and the average intensity of their poverty. Nepal’s Incidence of Poverty was 64.7 percent and her Average Intensity Across the Poor was 54.0 percent.
Slovenia, Czech Republic, Belarus, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Albania, respectively, are the countries ranking in the top ten on the index for 104 developing countries. The surveyed countries have a combined population of 5.2 billion, which comprise 78 percent of the human total. The study reveals that a third of population in all surveyed countries combined live in multidimensional poverty.
Half of the world’s poor, according to the MPI, live in South Asia (51 percent or 844 million people). India, in particular, has more MPI poor people in eight of her states alone (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million). The overall figure for the entire of African developing countries is 28 percent (458 million).
Because of varied and different years of surveys, the data lack comparative basis and these figures are suggestive at best. It can be hoped that the forthcoming UNDP Human Development Report will repair these inconsistencies and produce fine-tuned and more accurate results.
> Nepal Country Briefing for 2006.
> Data Sheet (exel)
> Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
> UNDP Human Development Report page
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Posted by Editor on July 31, 2010 2:58 AM