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Developing relevant Multidimensional Poverty Indeces at the MPPN Side Event of the 52nd UN Statistical Commission

Publicado el: February 26th, 2021 Por MPPN

The side event was chaired by Risenga Maluleke, the Statistician-General of Statistics South Africa, and Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Director of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN). Speakers included representatives from fourteen National Statistical Offices: Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Malawi, Mexico, Mongolia, Namibia, Palestine, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania as well as from OPHI and the MPPN.

Highlights included the following:

Hasibullah Mowahed, Deputy Director General, National Statistics and Information Authority, Afghanistan

National MPI launched in 2019

‘We have recently updated our MPI using 2020 data, it’s my honour to say that Afghanistan is the first country in the world to update its MPI with data collected during the pandemic.’

‘There were a few changes in survey questions from 2017 we have organized [in] the 2016/2017 to [the] 2020 datasets. There is a small but that the early stages of the pandemic did not measure a massive increase in poverty. For example, there was a ‘worst case’ scenario of increases in MPI due to the increased food insecurity and unemployment, by which three-quarters of Afghans might become MPI-poor…Having 2020 data on the MPI will help us in the year to come to be proactive in working to contain and reverse the effects of the pandemic on the poorest sectors.’

‘We are planning the next survey for 2021–2022, so the frequency of our data MPI and monetary poverty will increase.’

‘The a-MPI does have some innovations, for example we [see]…whether a female age 10 or above in the household is at primary school or literate and whether… a person …experiences a shock in income, [or] professional security outlined at the last 20 months from which they have not recovered.’

‘We have submitted our MPI as an SDG indicator. So, the A-MPI and related statistics now appear in the global SDG database in indicator 1.2.2.’

 

Mohammad Tajul Islam, Director General, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics

National MPI launching soon

‘Bangladesh has included the Multidimensional Poverty Index in the national development results framework of the recently approved eighth five-year plan.’

‘Bangladesh is working to generate the MPI as a regular activity.’

‘The national and child-focused MPI has been generated using the MICS 6 microdata. We have a plan for [regularly including] the MPI in the national statistical system…based on a suitable, regularly conducted socio-economic survey.’

‘We are committing to introducing such innovative approaches in the future to provide data support for monitoring the national development plan and SDGs.’

 

Juan Daniel Oviedo, Director, National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), Colombia

National MPI launched in 2011/12

‘Thanks to the integration of the information of the population census and some administrative records, we managed to have a novelty that was to have a proxy of multidimensional poverty at a municipality level…’

‘The mayor of Cartagena…an iconic city from the touristic perspective but [one] that was affected very hard due to the pandemic…had the opportunity to target some humanitarian measures…some food alleviation programmes and some income alleviation programmes to a specific section of the city thanks to the fact that we managed to share the shape files and information that lies behind this information.’

‘Since we are about to celebrate 10 years of…the MPI as a policy driver, we are in the redesign of the Multidimensional Poverty Index in Colombia in order to increase the accuracy level and also the relevance in order to take into account new dimensions that could be poverty alleviation strategies in the current situation, or even in the post-pandemic world, [for example] access to internet…We are going to wrap up the redesign of the MPI by the end of the year.’

‘We need to see how to update continuously the advances of the country in the public policy of poverty alleviation. Population censuses are every 10 years, living standards are probabilistic examples that we perform every year, and we wanted to face this challenge using alternative sources of information. We managed due to the Data For Now initiative of the United Nations Statistical Division, and PARIS21, to have access to continuous satellite imagery of 2018 [for] our country, and, using novel strategies in order to extract information from satellite imagery, we managed not only to disaggregate the Multidimensional Poverty Index at the municipality level, or urban level, or a street-block level of urban areas, but at every rural [level] of our country in a very consistent way.’

We are looking forward to sharing with all of you…how official statistics could go forward and start to be an example of data stewardship illustrating public policy in order to fight poverty in our country.’

 

Samuel K. Annim, Government Statistician, Ghana Statistical Service

National MPI launched in 2020

‘In the past 10 years, we could have really taken advantage of several censuses and surveys to regularly update our statistics on poverty either as a development agenda statistic, or as an official statistic…but we needed to reflect on how our context will make it possible for us to adapt it to make it a Ghanaian-specific MPI.’

‘…multidimensional poverty…gives us an opportunity to compare it with consumption expenditure poverty…Of the 45.6% persons that are poor, we realized that 26.34 were not captured as consumption expenditure poor.’

‘Using the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys that were conducted in 2011 and 2017, we were able to show how…clearly [the] incidence of poverty between…2011 to 2017 had reduced by 9.4%, and intensity of poverty had reduced by 2.4%. If you take this into absolute numbers, over the period, we saw 14 million people moving out of poverty.’

‘Ten out of the 12 indicators saw a reduction over the period. One particular indicator that saw an increase over the period was housing, which we simply measured by the quality of materials that are used for the floor and walls, and this is critical for us moving into the 2021 population housing census, so we have the basis showing evidence that over the period there has been that deprivation, and going into the census [we] will be in the position to compare what has happened from a comprehensive basis between 2011 and 2021.’

‘Ghana Statistical Service is committed to consistently releasing poverty statistics at least once every two years [between now and 2030] and we are starting with our population and housing census where we’ve integrated all the questions that would help us measure the 12 indicators [of the MPI]. Next year we’re going to do the annual household income and expenditure survey, so…we are pretty optimistic that we’ll continue to track the SDG 1.2.2 at least four times towards the end of the SDG period.’

‘We’ve started discussions with the national development planning commission on using [the MPI] as a tool for budgetary allocation… once you talk about budget allocation, you leverage that to talk about other interventions that are required for you to engage with other government ministries, departments and agencies, so our commitment is resolute on this, and we look forward to engaging with MPI in the next few years.’

 

Julio Santaella, President, National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico

National MPI launched in 2009.

‘The pandemic has had at least three major impacts on the production of official statistics: Concepts to be measured; Business continuity of statistical operations; and, increased demand for additional information.’

‘Several questions emerge regarding the impact from the pandemic: How does the differentiated impact on households arising from the pandemic and the different policy reactions, such as lockdowns, affect MPIs? Do we have a proper measurement of effective access to health services in the light of the pandemic? Do we have to consider other novel elements such as social distancing or reduced mobility in any way in new measurements?  Do we have to give more importance to the digital divide in terms of poverty measurement in times of teleworking, home office, and home education?’

‘Estimating poverty is not an easy task even in normal times and during a pandemic it is even more difficult…We implemented surveys based on telephone interviews (PATI and CATI) rather than use the typical face-to-face modalities (PAPI).’

‘In 2020, INEGI was able to carry out two key information programmes that are substantive to generate Mexico´s MPI. First, we were able to undertake the income-expenditure household survey and its results will be published later this year in July. And we were able to undertake the 2020 Population and Housing Census, publishing the first results last January and the complete results next month [March]. These two programmes will jointly provide the inputs needed to calculate Mexico´s MPI at the levels of states and even municipalities.’

 

Batdavaa Batmunkh, Chairman, National Statistics Office of Mongolia

Launching soon

‘Since 2019, Mongolia has been developing a MPI with assistance from the ADB and the . After several rounds of discussions, we have developed the first MPI measures with five dimensions and 18 indicators…the methodology was developed from the national housing and socio-economic survey based on the data from the 2010 to 2018, and also we have conducted additional pilot survey which is a nationally representative.’

‘From now on, we are planning to calculate the MPI. This year we plan to make these MPI measurements on a regular basis…and present the first results this year…to the government. However due to the COVID-19…there was a difficulty. In the first half of the year, we were gathering data using the face-to-face interview, but [in] the second half, we moved into the telephone interview… So we will have to work on checking the data quality very carefully.’

 

Alex Shimuafeni, Statistician-General and CEO, Namibia Statistics Agency

National MPI launching this year

‘We are in the final stages of developing our national MPI, which we are also planning to launch in the coming months.’

‘Throughout the process of developing the measure, we have maintained our emphasis on including all relevant stakeholders in different stages. We had a technical team that we came up with that comprised of not just the people from the Namibia Statistics Agency, but also included staff from the Ministries of Finance, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture, the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform, the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development, Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social welfare, as well as the Ministry of Health and Social Services, and, of course, the Ministry, which we are responsible to report to, which is the National Planning Commission… we also included the academics [from]… the Namibia University of Science and Technology, the University of Namibia, as well as researchers from the Institute for Public Policy Research. This approach actually helped us to build a broad base of awareness about the MPI across the different institutions and our hope is really that it will enable greater take up of the measure across the government and society to come together to address the issue of multidimensional poverty.’

‘We’re analyzing results not just at the national level, but we are also looking at differences between the urban and rural areas, which is a very important aspect for us…We are looking at the different regions, the sex of the household head, which is also another important aspect for us, and then the main language spoken, the household size, as well as the age groups, these disaggregations also can help us identify those who are being left behind to generate more targeted poverty reduction problems because we do have marginalized groups in the country.’

‘This measure will be used by Namibia to report to SDG 1 especially 1.2.2.’

 

Jawad Al Saleh, Assistant of President for the Development of Statistical Affairs, Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics

National MPI launched in 2019

‘In addition to the reporting [our MPI] for the SDGs, we are now working on what is called national poverty alleviation here in Palestine made by the Minister of Social Development. This strategy…is built on the framework of the Multidimensional Poverty Index’

‘To cover the impact of COVID, we are in the field collecting new data [via]…a high frequency survey, which is basically a socio-economic survey to capture the impact of COVID…I hope this survey will help us to update the MPI here in Palestine.’

 

Jameson Ndawala, Director, Demography and Social Media Statistics, Malawi National Statistical Office

National MPI launching in 2021

As we seek to shift the country’s narrative way away from poverty reduction towards wealth creation, tracking the lived experiences of the country’s citizens remains of crucial importance.’

The rigorous and intensive process of developing the national MPI, which has been guarded by and led by the Minister of Economic Planning and Development, has recently seen the structure of the national MPI being approved by the steering committee, and work is currently underway to finalize the full technical report leading to the launch of the national MPI in the coming months.’

‘Importantly, the underlying data for both the monetary measure of poverty and the multidimensional measure of poverty are found in the same data source, the Integrated Household Survey. This allows for the real complementarity of both measures to come to the fore as we will be able to detail and profile those individuals who are poor according to one or both measures.

‘The Malawi MPI will be launched in the Voluntary National Review and will be a key indicator to track progress towards achieving SDG 1.’

 

Iván Mauricio Ojeda, National Director, National Institute for Statistics (INE), Paraguay

National MPI launching in 2021

Translation and summary provided by Co-Chair Gonzalo Hernández Licona

The plan was to launch the MPI in Paraguay last year, but because of COVID, there were some delays.

This community started in 2018. The Paraguay MPI is going to complement income poverty measures that Paraguay has been estimating for over 20 years.

The dimensions of the MPI in Paraguay will include education, unemployment, health, water, sewage, overcrowding, and the MPI will be based on the national household survey.

Paraguay will be the tenth country in Latin America to introduce an MPI.

In March, there will be a final committee meeting to present the MPI to stakeholders with a plan to launch the MPI in May and include the MPI in Paraguay’s Voluntary National Reports for the SDGs.

 

Dennis S. Mapa, National Statistician, Philippine Statistics Authority

National MPI in progress

‘The Philippines recognizes that poverty is multidimensional. Aside from income, individuals or families may be deprived of education, health, living standards, and employment, which are not captured by income poverty alone. Such are the basic and essential amenities to life as embodied in the social reform and poverty alleviation act of the Philippines.’

‘The first estimates for the 2016 and 2017 MPI were released based on the initial MPI methodology developed with the assistance and guidance of the World Bank and OPHI. The Philippines, through the Philippine Statistics Authority, released the first set of MPI estimates for 2016 and 2017, the purpose of which is to solicit feedback and comments from stakeholders of poverty as inputs to the development of an official MPI methodology. Currently, we are refining the MPI methodology to consider other relevant indicators, taking into consideration the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts take advantage of the expertise of the members of the Technical Committee on poverty statistics to ensure the methodology is vetted and rigorously crafted. This will enable the creation of appropriate poverty-related policies and programs in line with the theme of the 2021 UNSC ‘Better Data Better Lives’.’

‘Specifically, the MPI will provide relevant information to our policy makers and programme implementers that will lead to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals Target 1.2 that is to reduce the proportion of women, men, and children living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030.’

‘In our country, the approval of the Community-Based Monitoring System, or the CBMS app, in 2019 will cater to the data support of the MPI along with other SDG indicators at the lower level of disaggregation so that no one will be left behind. The CBMS, which is targeted to have its full implementation next year in 2022, entails a census of households undertaken by the local government units with the participation of the community using an accelerated poverty profiling system in data collection, data processing, mapping and analysis.’

 

Sylvia Meku, Director General, National Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania

National MPI launching in 2021

‘We…plan to use the N-MPI [national MPI] to monitor regional and international commitments. For the regional commitments we have the east Africa community vision 2050, we have the Africa Development Agenda 2063. And also we are planning to use the N-MPI as an official statistic…to monitor national, regional, and international programmes. We have the five-year development plan too and plan three is already released last week. We will use the N-MPI to monitor those programmes. As a policy tool, we will use it to coordinate social policies, and target the poorest groups…Also, we will use it for budget allocations and [to] complement the poverty income measures. The N-MPI can also be disaggregated … by different groups, by gender, by age, and this can make the policy planning and monitoring very easily accessible.’

‘Currently, we have decided to run the estimates using two different cutoff points to see how they behave and also to see the robustness of changing the cutoff point. So, using the cutoff point of the 33%, we have some preliminary results and from the 55 million people in the Tanzania mainland, we found that about 68.4% are multidimensionally poor…When you look at the N-MPI in rural area[s], among the rural population, 80% of the people are multidimensionally poor, and when you look at the population in urban areas, almost half, that is 43 or 44%, of the population are multidimensionally poor. But more than half of the children, that is children aged under 18 years, are multidimensionally poor.’

 

Chaney John, Director General, Angola National Statistics Office

National MPI launched in 2020\

‘In Angola, we produce two types of Multidimensional Poverty Index, namely the municipality Multidimensional Poverty Index, whose source is the 2014 General Population and Housing Census, and the national Multidimensional Poverty Index, whose source is the Multiple Indicators and Health Survey.’

‘Angola strove in the production of such powerful tools in order to meet the sustainable development goals reflected under the agenda long-term development, the strategy vision of Angola 2025, and also …the national development plan 2018–2022 objectives, where the end of poverty is one of the main government priorities, and also to achieve the African Union’s Agenda 2063.’

‘In general, in 2020, it has been observed that…poverty incidence in the country is about 54%. The average multidimensional poverty intensity is of 48.9%. People across the national territory experience on average 26.4% of the deprivations [so the MPI is 0.264]. Rural areas experienced the highest level of incidence, of about 88%, and children under 10 years of age also experienced an incidence of about 64.3%. Overall, the indicators that most contribute to the results are nutrition, maternal health care, civil registrations, and years of schooling. Nevertheless, we cannot forget also the education and quality of life dimensions, which together contribute almost 70% of the Multidimensional Poverty Index in the country.’

The [municipal and national Multidimensional Poverty] Index …has been of great aid to policy makers in order to meet the country’s main objectives of inclusive growth and sustainable development.’

 

Nozipho Shabalala, Chief Director for Poverty and Inequality Statistics, Statistics South Africa

National MPI launched in 2014

‘South Africa released the first MPI report in 2014. We used the census 2001 and census 2011 data. We called it the South African MPI (SAMPI) because we customized it to the South African context. We added another dimension, which is a dimension on economic activity to the dimensions that [are] in the global MPI. We later released another data point in 2016 using a community survey that we conducted that year. From these reports, we learned that multidimensional poverty in South Africa is declining. It declined from 18% in 2001 to 7% in 2016. This we have reported in our SDG country report. We learned that the major contributors to the poverty situation in South Africa are unemployment and education… Those reports have been instrumental in the planning and decision-making in South Africa and also especially now during the COVID 19 pandemic.’

‘We are moving towards increasing the frequency of producing multidimensional poverty statistics to an annual basis.’

‘[We are] also reviewing the indicators and the dimensions that we are going to use in this annual South African MPI…there are new indicators that are emerging from these discussions, …[such as] access to technology, access to internet, other indicators [like] safety and security, and the environment.’

 

Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)

‘48 countries to date have mentioned multidimensional poverty in their Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs). It is a good forum for two reasons. One is you inform the international community about your work, and the second is that you inform other colleagues around government, who may not be as aware of how the MPI work is progressing. We encourage you as you move towards the SDGs…to consider including the MPI as you prepare future VNRs.’

‘Another avenue for engagement is to report the MPI as SDG indicator 1.2.2. The MPI is the only indicator of the SDGs for which national governments are the custodian agency, and UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank are supporting agencies. The reporting process is different from any other SDG indicator. Staff of the World Bank find the national MPI, validate it with UNICEF and UNDP, and then write to the SDG focal person in that country requesting that the SDG focal person confirm that the MPI headcount, intensity, disaggregation, standard errors, have all been correctly inputted, not just for one period, but back in time. We wanted to explain this process in case you have not yet reported your MPI, or for the countries that are about to launch it, and to encourage you all to do so. 64 countries have reported against indicator 1.2.2, a number of them reporting national MPIs and a number of those countries have spoken today. So, this is one space in which your work can be made visible again in the international community for others who may not yet have started the process of developing a measure of poverty in all forms and dimensions, and for all those seeking to use it as a tool to confront the pain and the disadvantages that so many continue to suffer.’

 

Full video of the 25 February event
How to report national MPIs in VNRs and the Global SDGs Indicator Database

Save the date for Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network Side-Event at UNSC

Publicado el: February 1st, 2021 Por MPPN

Multidimensional Poverty Indices (MPIs) are widely used to measure and fight poverty in all its dimensions. In this session, statisticians will share how they are using MPIs to coordinate poverty eradication policies, track progress towards the SDGs, and target the most vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The event will take place virtually on Zoom. Please register here for the Thursday, 25th February 2021 side event.

Connection details will be sent directly to registered participants. If you have any questions about the event please contact mppn@qeh.ox.ac.uk.

 

More info:

 

 

UN Statistical Commission 50th Session – MPPN Side Event 2019

Publicado el: March 6th, 2019 Por MPPN

On 5th March 2019, the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN) hosted a side event at the 50th United Nations Statistical Commission titled “Multidimensional Poverty: Measurement for Action.” More than 70 statisticians and other stakeholders gathered in New York to discuss progress and issues with developing and implementing multidimensional poverty measures to reduce poverty and encourage policies that leave no one behind in the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).

The side event was collegially chaired by Risenga Maluleke, the Statistician-General of Statistics South Africa. Speakers included representatives from OPHI and Directors of Statistics from Angola, Chad, Colombia, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine, Philippines, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda.

 

Highlights include the following:

Risenga Maluleke, Statistician-General of Statistics South Africa.

“The next hour will be a real feast of interest. You will hear a cascade of presentations from 14 National Statisticians on multidimensional poverty metrics and how these are used in action to complement monetary poverty measures and fight poverty in all its dimensions.”

 

Lisa Grace Bersales, National Statistician, Philippines

“When we reported the MPI to our Philippines Statistics Authority Board, we told the different ministries that we will tell you where most Filipino families are most deprived. And when our Ministry of Budget heard this, they said: ‘Oh, we want to know that.’ Because when we approve proposals of budgets of certain sectors—health, education, labor—we want to know if indeed these are where the budget should be… So it’s not just about policy, but it’s also about where government financing will prioritize. This is really what we wanted the MPI to be focused on.”

See press release from the Philippines here

 

Yemi Kale, Statistician General, National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria

 “As far as policymakers are concerned, you see them asking for disaggregation of the MPI. It’s not just at the national level, but also at the state level. States want to know which deprivations are worse and you can see them actually designing policies to tackle certain areas.”

 “This can also be used to locate where the poor are. So the National Social Safety Net was designed using the MPI numbers across different states to target those states and areas with the highest deprivations. And you can see that the policies were targeted towards those areas in designing the entire policy framework.”

  

Julio Santaella, President, National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico

 “In the definition of these variables [that go into the multidimensional poverty measure], of course, there is a huge and intense discussion between INEGI, the statistical office, and CONEVAL, the council, because we have to come up with implementation of these definitions. So it’s not only important to be conceptually rigorous, but it also has to be feasible to be applied on the ground.”

“Right now we are almost at 10 years of this measurement, and CONEVAL is going to redefine the methodology. The law has upgraded some of the rights—so, for instance, the level of education has gone beyond primary that is mandated by law to secondary level—so that is something that has to be included into this measure.”

 

Juan Daniel Oviedo Arango, Director General, National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), Colombia

 “The MPI is measurement for action because, at the first glance, we use the MPI as an accountability platform of how social policies are going to improve life quality conditions of our citizens.”

“The MPI not only was used as an accountability platform but also as a strategic policy designing instrument. So all the socio-economic policy of our government turned around the MPI.”

“The MPI is also a very good example in our country of good governance. An MPI needs rigor and independence in the measurement because it cannot be just a government-biased indicator, but it has to be really independent.”

 

Nour Goukouni Nour, Director General, National Institute for Statistics, Economic and Demographic Studies (INSEED), Chad

 “For a better evaluation of the Sustainable Development Goals, and especially to have information to feed into the 2017-2021 Five-Year Plan, it is important to develop socioeconomic indicators that can capture, from many angles, the indicators of poverty in a multidimensional approach.”

“The results of the MPI will provide the Government with the necessary information to better guide public policies in measuring poverty and well-being, to geographically target vulnerable groups, to monitor and evaluate poverty reduction, and to monitor SDG indicators.”

 

Mohd Uzir Mahidin, Chief Statistician, Department of Statistics, Malaysia

“In line with the introduction of the MPI in the 2010 Human Development Report, Malaysia has developed a national measurement of MPI that is appropriate to the socio-economic well-being and development framework of the nation. The use of the MPI will ensure that policy evaluation will shift beyond poverty to include vulnerability as well. The MPI will complement the BLI measure and monetary poverty from a multidimensional perspective.”

“The MPI we compute reflects both the incidence of multidimensional poverty deprivation, as well as the intensity.”

 

Ariunzaya Ayush, Chairperson, National Statistics Office, Mongolia

“In 2017, Mongolia conducted a pilot survey and covered three counties. We tried to measure the MPI in four dimensions, having Education; Health; Housing conditions; and Standard of living. … We understood that we had to organise discussions on selected indicators between multi-stakeholders in the government to see which indicators we need. So we are working now with the World Bank on projects, taking deeper surveys on nomadic households and we also have an ADB project which is working on SDG indicators, and especially working on Multidimensional indicators.”

 

Camilo Simão Ferreira de Ceita, Director General, National Institute of Statistics, Angola

“… what we need to do is come up with our own definitions for our own MPI, so we started the process with OPHI’s support through a national consultation to define the dimensions and the indicators. We think the dimensions will be Health; Education; and Standard of Living. We count on the support of Statistics South Africa, they have a lot of experience in this issue, and of course on OPHI to give us support and I think it will happen in May. I think this will be a revolution about poverty in Angola.”

 

Abdella Zidan Allag, Chairman, Bureau of Statistics and Census, Libya

“We took an opportunity because there was a survey done in 2016 and we used that data to measure the MPI for Libya. We concentrated on three dimensions – Work and Education as one dimension; Health; and Living Standards. The values from this index are reliable because when we go through them, they show the truth of poverty in Libya. This report has succeeded in providing indicators we can rely on because we didn’t have a measure before, so this is a great opportunity for us to have indicators to assess the first goal of the SGD’s.”

 

Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics

“In 2014, we started working on the MPI with the national committee in Palestine and with consultants from ESCWA. We also conducted the households consumption and expenditure survey in 2016/2017, and we also have the census 2017 – we are working on the MPI using the big survey and the census. The National Policy Agenda 2017-2022 highlights “Putting Citizens First”, and in response to that, we are working to have Multidimensional variable design besides the income line”.

 

Babacar Ndir, Director General, National Agency of Statistics and Demography (ANSD), Senegal

“In Senegal the MPI was developed by the Observatory of Quality and Living conditions. The Observatory is an association of government and statisticians – like Ministry of Economy, the ANSD, Ministry of Social Development, Social Economy and so and so. Also, the private sector and civil society. And this framework has been put place to better take into account the implications of the MPI in public policies. The process of developing the MPI has followed different steps suggested by the Alkire-Foster methodology. The steps are as follows – first was to analyse the existing situation. The second step was to set the units of identification, and the third is to choose MPI parameters. And this choice developed slowly, and 5 dimensions were selected – Education; Health; Reading Conditions; Employment; Governance and Institutions.”

 

Imelda Madgalene Atai, Acting Executive Director, Uganda Bureau of Statistics

“The analysis of the MPI is based on the 2016/17 Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS 2016/17), UDHS 2016, and the UNPS. The Alkire Foster (AF) methodology is adopted in the estimation of multidimensional poverty at national, rural/urban and sub-national levels (Alkire and Foster, 2011). The AF framework employs the dual-cut off approach (deprivation cut off and poverty cut off) to identify the poor. For the Uganda MPI, a household (and all its members) is considered poor if they fall short or is deprived in 40 percent of the weighted dimensions.

Dimensions and indicators for Poverty Include: Education, Health, Living Standards, Empowerment”

 

Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford

“Some countries launched their National MPI’s in 2018 and are not here, like Nepal. And also, Child MPI’s like Panama. Also, in 2019, Sierra Leone, the President, released their National Development Report with their National MPI last week – so that’s the first of 2019 and there will be more countries launching official MPI’s in 2019.

The MPPN works mainly on national statistics, but also with many agencies – and national MPI’s are permanent official statistics like a monetary measures – which both reflect poor peoples’ experiences and also reflect the policy priority, including the SDG agenda at the national level. So we are very happy that to support this with UNDP we are releasing a new book shortly – it will be online – “How to build a National MPI” – It has both the statistical process and the policy process in the same book.

We are very grateful to each person here. And there are many here who haven’t spoken but whose expertise we really value and recognise. This is a network of people who are terribly committed, and I think by working together we can move this forward to the benefit of those we are working on behalf of.”

See power point presentation here

 

Pictures are available here.

2018 UNSC | Side Event at UN Statistical Commission shows how MPI can break silos of poverty

Publicado el: March 8th, 2018 Por MPPN

The side event was chaired by Pali Lehohla, former Statistician-General of Statistics South Africa and Steering Committee member of the MPPN. Speakers included Directors of Statistics from Nepal, Philippines, Ecuador, South Africa, Tanzania, Mongolia, Uganda and Tunisia, with representatives also from Colombia, Rwanda and Egypt, as well as UNDP´s Human Development Report Office, UN´s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, UN´s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and OPHI.

The event’s presentations will be added soon.

 

Highlights of each speaker’s points include:

Pali Lehohla, former Statistician-General, South Africa and Steering Committee, MPPN

  • “We have a real treat tonight – a burst of information on how multidimensional poverty measures are being designed, disaggregated, and used in action to break the silos of poverty. For those of you who are here for the first time, you will leave here with a briefing on methodology and a map of exciting innovations in many countries.”
  • “Multidimensional poverty is proving to give voice because it says ‘this is who we are, this is where we are, and this is how we are.’ So it gives voice to the poor and leaves no one behind.”
  • “From observation, to monitoring, to planning, this is the challenge, I think, that we have to look at: What is the arsenal of tools that we can apply through multidimensional poverty into the planning processes?”

 

James Foster, Research Associate, OPHI and Oliver T Carr Professor, George Washington University

  • “Why MPI has a very straight answer: poverty itself contains multiple forms with many dimensions. Who says that? UN member countries say this via the SDG process.”
  • “It’s not just how many people are deprived, but also what they are deprived in. The different dimensions have to be examined in conjunction.”
  • “MPIs provide a headline measure, disaggregations, interlinkages, to inform policy action, to complement monetary measures, to help leave no one behind.”

Full presentation is available here.

 

Suman Raj Aryal, Director General, Central Bureau of Statistics, Nepal

  • “I think Nepal is one of the youngest countries to prepare an official National Multidimensional Poverty Index. We released our first figures a few months ago.”
  • “There are fundamentally five motivations for Nepal to make a multidimensional poverty index: the first is to view the poverty through the different dimensions; the second is to assess the short-term effect of public interventions; the third is to understand the remittance effect; the fourth is to get an idea of the inter-sectoral linkages; the last one is, of course, to align with the SDG framework.”
  • “Nepal decided to use the Global MPI as our National MPI with minor adjustments – that way we can compare with others, and also look within our seven new provinces”

 

Lisa Grace Bersales, National Statistician, Philippine Statistics Authority, Philippines

  • “Poverty statistics are the most controversial official statistic we produce, so we really seek the guidance of this inter-agency committee, who are statisticians and economists.”
  • “In the Philippines, poverty is a contentious issue, so we had to get the inputs from various groups, especially our national anti-poverty commission and also civil society, which had very strong ideas about which dimensions should be covered.”

 

Reinaldo Cervantes, Executive Director, National Institute of Statistics, Ecuador

  • “In Ecuador, we are considering a new measure of poverty corresponding to our constitution…. our constitution mentions that the rights of people must be covered in multiple dimensions – education, health, employment, social security, habitat conditions, access to safe water, and others.”
  • “Since the year 2017, we have two specific goals for multidimensional poverty reduction in our National Plan: first, reduce the multidimensional poverty rate from 35% to 27%; and second, reduce from 60% to 49% the multidimensional poverty rate in the rural areas.”

 

Risenga Maluleke, Statistician General, Statistics South Africa, South Africa

  • “Between 2011 and 2016, poverty trends have diverged a lot more among municipalities.”
  • “SAMPI helps to evaluate the effectiveness of poverty reduction, and, of course, it indicates the contributions of government social programs.”
  • “We want to update the levels of disaggregation and use the SAMPI in policymaking.”
  • “We are agreeing that we will come to meet in South Africa in October 2018 for the next MPPN Annual Meeting.”

 

Albina Chuwa, Director General, National Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania

  • “We have been using the Global MPI in Tanzania for our national human development reports.”
  • “Currently we are conducting our household budget survey, and now we want to establish our National MPI. We have engaged as many stakeholders as possible, including our development partners group.”
  • “We are eager to join the group [of countries with National MPIs] and to see all these types of dimensions presented here.”

 

Ariunzaya Ayush, Chairperson, National Statistics Office, Mongolia

  • “In Mongolia, we don’t have the official survey yet, but we have done a pilot survey.”
  • “The outcome was quite high. When the income-based poverty measure was released in 2016, it was 29%, almost 30%. In the multidimensional poverty measure, the rate of deprivations for health was 42%, housing dimension was almost 60%, and standard of living was 40%.
  • “Some of the selected indicators cannot express Mongolian conditions, maybe, and that could be the reason for the high MPI [relative to the income-based poverty measure]. Therefore, we understand that we need to organize more discussions with the related ministries and, of course, a multi-stakeholder group at the policy level.”

Full presentation is available here.

 

Ben Paul Mungyereza, Executive Director, Bureau of Statistics, Uganda

  • “We have not started producing the MPI, but we have done the groundwork for producing the MPI. So far, we have created a Core Technical Team and a Community of Practice. The core technical team reports to the Ministry of Finance and it has members from the national statistics office, the planning authority, and the Economic Policy Research Centre. The core technical team is responsible for reviewing and computing the MPI, while the Community of Practice is mandated to engage the stakeholders and increase awareness among the stakeholders.”
  • “The consultations we have had so far, the outcome is informing the dimensions and indicators that we need to address. And the areas that are clearly coming out that need to be addressed by the MPI: accountability, powerlessness, vulnerability, agriculture, housing, and education.”

 

Hedi Saidi, Director General, National Institute of Statistics, Tunisia

  • “In Tunisia, we have developed, in coordination with OPHI and UNDP, a National MPI.”
  • “Our MPI provides a strong tool to inform, monitor, and evaluate progress towards priorities that include employment, alongside living standards, health, and education. We incorporate these priorities into our Development Plan 2017-2020, and the MPI is designed to monitor it.”
  • “The MPI tool will be used to monitor, evaluate, and adjust the National Plan and its related social economic programs by targeting the most important vulnerable populations in an efficient way.”

Full presentation is available here.

 

Carlos Felipe Prada, Deputy Director, Administrative Department of National Statistics (DANE) Colombia

  • “The numbers of poverty in Colombia have been decreasing. We are working and thinking, because we have some indicators that are close to 100%… So, we are trying to have a new index in a couple of years.”
  • “In Colombia we have an expert committee on poverty and multidimensional measurement that includes academics and some other government institutions and receives comments from civil society.”
  • “We want to have the MPI disaggregated at the lowest municipality. With this census, with the national household surveys in Colombia, we can have the MPI measure for each municipality in Colombia and each village in the rural areas of Colombia. For us, it is a tremendous advantage and a tremendous improvement in our measurement because we want the MPI measure to have results for each department in Colombia.”

Full presentation is available here.

 

Ivan Murenzi, Deputy Director, National Institute of Statistics, Rwanda

  • “Rwanda is a very small, developing country, but with great ambitions. And poverty is definitely one of the key, key issues that the leadership is committed to tackle.”
  • “For our recent results, which we hope to release sometime in August or September, we will be disseminating results of monetary poverty as well as multidimensional poverty. So, one key issue I had in my mind is how do we package this together?”
  • “In Rwanda, we usually have an annual leadership retreat, which brings together all government leaders. And it was amazing to see from some of the discussions we had through the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, how this multidimensional assessment of poverty begins to bring everyone on board when we talk of poverty. Previously, in my view, monetary poverty has been more seen as an issue for the Ministries of Finance and Planning, but what multidimensional poverty is doing is bringing all the other stakeholders, from all corners, together.”

 

Heba Saied, Statistician, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Egypt

  • “Poverty is not only monetary metrics, but there is a global trend to define poverty as the lack of access to services or deprivations in other aspects of life.”
  • “Why do we use the HEICS [Household Expenditure and Income Survey] for our MPI? The HEICS provided non-monetary data about many indicators that are useful for multidimensional poverty measurement, as well as household expenditure and consumption. Also, the period of the survey is every two years, which allows for continuous monitoring of the conditions of the poor.”

Full presentation is available here.

 

Selim Jahan, Director, Human Development Report Office, UNDP

  • “There is no need to emphasize once again that poverty is multidimensional. We all know that. But, at the same time we need a measure for that multidimensional poverty because often it is said that what we cannot count, is not counted.”
  • “We started the journey on the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, back in 2010. When HDRO and OPHI started that journey through collaboration and worked over the years to publish and disseminate the results in the HDRs. Over the years, there have been some differences in methodologies, and there was the HDRO methodology and the OPHI methodology, but over the last year, Sabina and I and both our teams have discussed it over and over and found out that the differences were minimal and trivial, in some cases, if I may say so. Therefore, we have now decided to have one Global MPI methodology.”
  • “As in the movie Casablanca, the last line was ‘Louie, this is the beginning of a longstanding friendship,’ and, with that I say that with OPHI and HDRO, this is also the beginning of a longstanding friendship, the results of which will be reflected in new generations of the HDRs.”

 

Pascual Gerstenfeld, Director, Statistics Division, UN-ECLAC

  • “We are close to 60 persons, at this time, in New York, in a storm, talking about how to measure poverty.”
  • “In 33 years, this [the MPPN] is the strongest network I have been involved in… When we began in 2013, there were fewer than 20 countries and five institutions, but now we are 53 countries and 15 institutions in less than five years. This is a real network. The word ‘Network’ is very strong and really, really important.”
  • “We are working together now in four of the five regional commissions – ESCWA, ECA, ESCAP, and ECLAC – on a study of availability, comparability, and quality of indicators for monitoring goals 1.2 and 1.4.”

 

Marwan Khawaja, Chief, Demographic & Social Statistics, UN-ESCWA

  • “The Arab Multidimensional Poverty Report was released a few months ago, at the end of 2017… The main goal was to develop an MPI tailored to middle-income countries, which a majority of Arab countries are.”
  • “We wanted this MPI to serve as a foundation for developing a poverty reduction strategy.”
  • “The report was produced with the League of Arab States, and that implies that the member states of the League had to endorse the report.

 

Sabina Alkire, Director, OPHI

  • “Many countries have launched their MPIs as an official permanent statistic of poverty that goes along with the monetary poverty measure. That has to go through a number of internal processes, so it becomes an official statistic – and one that is used by policy at the highest level to drive action and reduce disadvantages effectively.”
  • “Besides statistical reports, Voluntary National Reviews and the High Level Political Forum are places countries are sharing how the MPI can be used for policy.”
  • “Many countries are wanting to report their MPI for SDG indicator 1.2.2.”
  • “The MPPN [Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network] is a South-South network that was launched in Oxford by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics, and President Santos of Colombia, that tries to have both statisticians and policymakers share their experiences in developing an MPI. You are all welcome to join and share your insights with us on how best to fight poverty in all its dimensions.”

Full presentation is available here.

 

Photo gallery:

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MPPN Side Event at UN Statistical Commission 2018

Publicado el: February 22nd, 2018 Por MPPN

The event will be chaired by Pali Lehohla, Former Statistician General of South Africa and MPPN Steering Committee member. Confirmed speakers include Lisa Grace Bersales, National Statistician of the Philippines; Suman Raj Aryal, Director General of the Central Bureau of Statistics for Nepal; Reinaldo Cervantes, Executive Director, National Institute of Statistics, Ecuador; Dr. Abdella Zidan, Chairman of the Bureau of Statistics and Census for Libya;  Risenga Maluleke, Statistician General of South Africa;  Albina Chuwa, Director General of the National Bureau of Statistics of Tanzania; Hedi Saidi, Director General of the National Institute of Statistics of Tunisia; Ivan Murenzi, Deputy Director, National Institute of Statistics, Rwanda; Rasha Saied, Statistician, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Egypt; Angélica M. Palma Robayo, Coord of Tech Cooperation, DANE, Colombia; and James Foster, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at The Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University.

Also Selim Jahan, Director, Human Development Report Office, UNDP; Haishan Fu, Director of the Data Group, World Bank; Pascual Gerstenfeld, Director, Statistics Division, UN-ECLAC; Marwan Khawaja, Chief, Demographic & Social Stats, UN-ESCWA; and Sabina Alkire, Director, OPHI & Secretariat of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN).

As in previous years, this side event will provide an opportunity for leading statisticians and MPPN members at the forefront of innovations in poverty measurement to discuss and share their experiences using multidimensional poverty measures.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to mppn@ophi.org.uk with your name and job title. Please note: as the event will be held at UN Headquarters, it is unfortunately only accessible to those who have a UN security pass. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Agenda is available here.

Also see:

UNSC 48th MPPN Side Event ‘Measuring the interconnected dimensions of poverty to energize policy’

UNSC 47th MPPN Side Event

UNSC 46th MPPN Side Event