Fanja* is 59 years old and lives in a town of 5,000 people in eastern Madagascar. The town is situated on the outskirts of a forest and national park. The park is globally renowned for its lemur population.

The General Law of Social Development (LGDS in Spanish) establishes the creation of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) in Mexico, which, among its functions, is responsible for establishing guidelines and criteria for the definition, identification, and measurement of poverty. Likewise, this law establishes the obligation for public entities and agencies participating in the execution of social development programmes, to use the information generated by CONEVAL.

In this new edition of Dimensions, we present work being carried out for the measurement of multidimensional poverty in several countries and how this has been used in different regions of the world.

The methodology of multidimensional measurement of poverty in Mexico links two analytical spheres: economic wellbeing and social rights. The latter includes indicators of social deprivations (education lag, access to health services, access to social security, housing quality and housing spaces, access to utilities at home, and access to nutritious and quality food.)