Multidimensional Poverty Index — Basic Structure

Basic Structure

India's National MPI assigns equal total weight to three dimensions: health, education and standard of living. Its twelve indicators do not each receive an equal one-twelfth weight. Health has nutrition, child/adolescent mortality and maternal health; education has years of schooling and school attendance; standard of living contains seven indicators including sanitation, drinking water, electricity and housing.

The weighting within dimensions matters. Nutrition receives one-sixth, mortality and maternal health one-twelfth each; the two education indicators receive one-sixth each; each of the seven living-standard indicators receives one-twenty-first. Add the weights of the deprivations present to obtain a household's weighted deprivation score. The multidimensional-poverty cutoff is at least one-third.

After identification, H is the proportion of people classified as multidimensionally poor. A is their average weighted deprivation score. MPI equals H multiplied by A, with proportions expressed consistently. If H is 0.20 and A is 0.50, MPI is 0.10. Averaging deprivation across the entire population instead of the poor would change the meaning of A.

NITI's 2023 progress report compares NFHS-4, 2015–16, with NFHS-5, 2019–21, reporting headcounts of 24.85 and 14.96 per cent. Its 2024 paper's estimates for additional periods use interpolation or extrapolation. Neither the release year nor an estimated period should be relabelled as a fresh direct survey.