“The incedence and intensity of poverty are more important in determining poverty based on income alone”. In this context analyse the latest United Nations Multidimensional Poverty Index Report.

Income poverty counts those below a money-metric line; the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), published by UNDP with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using the Alkire-Foster method, instead multiplies the incidence of poverty (H — the share of people who are multidimensionally poor) by its intensity (A — the average share of weighted deprivations the poor actually suffer). This H × A design is precisely why incidence and intensity, rather than income alone, determine both who is poor and how deeply.

Structure of the index

• Three equally weighted dimensions — health (nutrition, child mortality), education (years of schooling, school attendance) and living standards (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets).
• A person deprived in one-third or more of the weighted indicators is counted as MPI-poor.

India in the recent UNDP-OPHI reports

• About 415 million Indians exited multidimensional poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-21 — the largest recorded reduction anywhere.
• Incidence fell from roughly 55% to about 16%, and intensity from around 47% to 42%; the poorest states, children and disadvantaged caste groups improved fastest, narrowing gaps.
• Nutrition, cooking fuel and housing remain the biggest contributors to remaining deprivation, and rural poverty stays well above urban.
• NITI Aayog's national MPI mirrors the trend, with headcount falling from about 25% in 2015-16 to about 15% in 2019-21.

Analytical significance and limits

• The MPI exposes overlapping service deprivations that income measures miss, and supports targeting — the logic behind NITI Aayog's national MPI and the Aspirational Districts Programme.
• But it omits income itself, depends on lagged NFHS survey rounds, and captures acute deprivation rather than vulnerability to relapse.

Read alongside consumption-based poverty lines, the MPI equips policy to attack not merely how many are poor, but how poor they are — the true measure of progress against deprivation.