In this interview, Sabina Alkire, OPHI Director, talks about the COVID-19 pandemic and the ways that countries could prevent and mitigate its impact on people living in multidimensional poverty – and in the end, make permanent change.

Due to the need of the Ministries of Finance and Ministry of Territory Administration and State Reform (MAT in Portuguese) to identify the level of poverty of each municipality and group them into technically sound and useful classifications for the distribution of the public budget (OGE in Portuguese), we contacted the National Institute of Statistics (INE) so that we could also calculate poverty on a municipal level.

In Angola, UNDP has established a solid and fruitful partnership with the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which has led to key results such as the first of Angola’s SDG baseline indicators reports and technical trainings for local governments on multidimensional poverty.

The state of Oaxaca is located in southeast Mexico. It has a population of almost four million people residing in its 570 municipalities. Historically, it has been one of the poorest states in the country, but that trend is reversing. We spoke with Oaxaca’s governor, Alejandro Murat Hinojosa, about how they are using multidimensional measurement to tackle poverty.

In September of 2018, Panama launched its Multidimensional Poverty Index for boys, girls and adolescents as a complement to the national MPI launched the prior year. It was the first official MPI for that specific age range in Latin America. We discussed this index with Michelle Muschett, Panama’s former Minister of Social Development.