The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was launched in 2010 by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It measures poverty by looking at several factors beyond just income.

It evaluates poverty across three key dimensions:

• Health: nutrition and child mortality.
• Education: years of schooling and school attendance.
• Standard of living: access to electricity, clean water, sanitation, cooking fuel, housing quality, and basic assets.

A person is considered multidimensionally poor if they suffer from deprivations in at least one-third of these weighted indicators. The MPI provides a poverty intensity score that measures both how many people are poor and how severe their living conditions are.

The MPI is important for development policy because it:

• Shows how people are poor, rather than just looking at their income.
• Reveals overlapping problems that income metrics often miss.
• Allows governments to create targeted solutions instead of general policies.
• Works alongside income-based measures, such as the $2.15 international poverty line.