A new multidimensional calculation of poverty reveals that India’s BIMARU states, despite having made some improvements, continue to be poor
Chennai: There?s very little evidence of convergence on social indicators among Indian states, new data on health, education and access to basic amenities between 1998-99 and 2015-16 shows. Over nearly two decades, the ?BIMARU? states have remained at the bottom, while Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Delhi remain at the top. Bihar has remained India?s poorest state over the period.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is a relatively new composite index that seeks to fix some of the conceptual and statistical problems with United Nations Development Programme?s (UNDP) widely used Human Development Index (HDI). One major criticism of the HDI was that it is too strongly determined by its income component.
The MPI, created by Sabina Alkire and James Foster of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, uses 10 indicators to measure poverty in three dimensions: education, health and living standards. If an individual is deprived in a third or more of ten weighted indicators, the index identifies them as poor, and the intensity of their poverty is measured by the number of deprivations they are experiencing.
In its 2018 update, India?s MPI index in 2018 was 0.121, placing it 53rd out of 105 developing countries for which data was available. Poor nutrition was the largest contributor to India?s multidimensional poverty while insufficient access to clean water and child mortality contributed the least. Relatively few people experienced deprivations in school attendance.
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