In May 2019, Sierra Leone became one of the first countries in Africa to publish a national Multi- dimensional Poverty Index (MPI-SL). The MPI-SL comprises five dimensions and 14 indicators and identifies a person as being multidimensionally poor if they experience more than 40% of the deprivations included in the measure.
This year the U.S. Census Bureau published a report with an innovative multidimensional poverty measurement exercise called the Multidimensional Deprivation Index (MDI), which is in- tended to complement, without replacing, the official income-based poverty measures.
There is now a consensus that addressing child poverty is important to breaking long-term social and economic drivers of poverty, and to reflecting the human rights agenda. Indeed, the commitment is enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This consensus is recent and not universal. Only three years ago I was discussing the issue with governmental officials who said, ‘children can’t be poor because they don’t work’. So, it is important not to be complacent and to work on improving evidential and advocacy-based approaches, as discussed later in this Dimensions issue.
One of the reasons it is so important to eradicate child and adolescent poverty is because of its consequences for a person’s present and future development. Poverty during childhood is more likely to be permanent, since its effects on health and physical and cognitive development are usually irreversible. The economic and social dependency of girls, boys and adolescents generates complex dynamics of vulnerability that require appropriate public policy strategies.
Target 1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals is, by 2030, to reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions. To monitor this goal, countries will have to define and measure multidimensional poverty. There are a few examples of measures of multidimensional poverty, and sometimes it might be difficult for policy makers and civil society alike to distinguish one multidimensional measure from another. One pair of measures whose similarities and differences are not well understood are the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and the Multidimensional Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA). This article attempts to shed some light on this issue.