Release of the 2018 Statistical Update

THE UNITED NATIONS, 20 Dec. - (ANA) - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released two important measures of global development this year: the Human Development Index (HDI) ( http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI )  and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)  ( http://hdr.undp.org/en/2018-MPI ) . Together they paint a broader picture of the world today – a picture that goes beyond purely monetary measures and focuses on people’s choices and opportunities. To mark the release of the new data, journalist Femi Oke spoke with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner and HDRO Director Selim Jahan who gave an overview of the state of human development – snapshots of current conditions as well as long-term trends on progress, inequality, gender gaps and the environment.



Human Development Reports



The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone. The HDI can also be used to question national policy choices, asking how two countries with the same level of GNI per capita can end up with different human development outcomes. These contrasts can stimulate debate about government policy priorities.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.

The health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth, the education dimension is measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age. The standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita. The HDI uses the logarithm of income, to reflect the diminishing importance of income with increasing GNI. The scores for the three HDI dimension indices are then aggregated into a composite index using geometric mean. Refer to Technical notes for more details.

The HDI simplifies and captures only part of what human development entails. It does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc. The HDRO offers the other composite indices as broader proxy on some of the key issues of human development, inequality, gender disparity and poverty.

A fuller picture of a country's level of human development requires analysis of other indicators and information presented in the statistical annex of the report.



The 2018 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)


The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reaffirmed the importance of multi-dimensional approaches to poverty eradication that go beyond economic deprivation. The 2018 MPI answers the call to better measure progress against Sustainable Development Goal 1 – to end poverty in all its forms; and opens a new window into how poverty - in all its dimensions – is changing.

With the 2018 estimates, the MPI measures acute multidimensional deprivations in 105 countries covering 77 percent of the global population.


2018 MPI: dimensions, indicators, deprivation cutoffs, and weights


The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.

The original MPI was co-designed and launched in 2010 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report Office (HDRO) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at University of Oxford. It was first published in 2010 as part of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Human Development Report (HDR). The original MPI were aligned, insofar as was then possible, with indicators used to track the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The global MPI has been published in every HDR subsequently, with adjustments that have been documented in the methodological reports.

The advent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, along with improvements in some survey questions to better reflect SDG indicators, provided an opportunity to revisit the global MPI and publish a revised version in 2018.

The improvements in the global MPI coincide with the start of the Third Decade on Poverty Reduction (2018–2027). They reflect inputs from a consultative process encompassing academics, UN agencies, national statistics offices, and civil society organizations. They build upon, insofar as data permit, the recommendations of the World Bank’s Atkinson Commission on Monitoring Global Poverty (World Bank 2017) that are concerned with non-monetary poverty measures. The empirical global MPI results launched in September 2018 reflect new estimations from every single dataset, following a consistent computational strategy.   - (ANA) -

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