Poverty has traditionally been defined as a lack of income or consumption. However, focusing on one factor alone, such as income, is not enough to capture the true reality of poverty. Therefore, multidimensional poverty measures have been developed to create a more comprehensive picture by looking at multiple dimensions such as health, education, and housing conditions. Multidimensional poverty headcounts capture the proportion of people, households or children regarded as multidimensionally poor. In addition, the average number of deprivations captures the depth (also labeled breadth or intensity) of multidimensional poverty. There are also various ways to assess how poor the poorest people are (severity of multidimensional poverty).

Indicators: Variables (singly or combined) used to assess deprivation in each dimension

Dimensions: conceptual categories which comprise poverty if there is deprivation in one or more of them

Thresholds of deprivation: Minima to be achieved in each dimension to consider the child, person or household attains an adequate level of satisfaction within that domain

Cut-off: minimum number of deprivations to be considered poor (could be one)

Rights constitutive of poverty: Rights that directly and fundamentally require consumption of (public or private resources) for their continued realization; each one is a dimension of child poverty

The compiled data of SDG 1.2.2 are not intended to be comparable across countries due to the diverse dimensions, indicators and thresholds, used in different countries. Also, cut-offs to determine poverty vary across countries.

The methodology to estimate multidimensional poverty consists of two steps:

1) Identification consists of finding out who (a child, a household or a person) is deprived in each dimension (i.e. their indicators for that dimension fall below the minimum threshold to avoid deprivation).

2) Aggregation across dimensions entails counting those who are considered poor (i.e. everyone who suffers a deprivation if the cut-off is one, or those who suffer at least two deprivations if the cut-off is two, etc.).

Within this methodology, there are many ways to choose indicators and dimensions to select thresholds and cut-offs and to aggregate across dimensions.

Official multidimensional poverty headcount (% population) is disaggregated by sex and age. The age band for official multidimensional poverty headcount for children is mostly 0-17, but some countries have different age definition for children, such as 0-15 in El Salvador.

The treatment of missing values differs from survey to survey. For details, please refer to the official documentation through the links listed at the end.

No estimation by international agencies has been implemented for missing values in this data.

Since the data for indicator 1.2.2 are based on the national definitions of poverty – and the methodologies used to produce them are different, as described in the “comments and limitations” section, data are not comparable across countries. Thus regional and global aggregates are not produced.

In the process of producing the global MPI described above, the UNDP also produces the multidimensional poverty headcount. However, this number often differs from the nationally produced multidimensional poverty headcount as they use the different dimensions, indicators and cut-off points.

Initially, the data has been input by poverty economists, which has been checked carefully together with the metadata information by the central team for monitoring SDGs 1.2.2 in the World Bank. Then data has been sent to the UNDP and UNICEF for further verification.

The following table shows how many of the 5 headcount data (population, household, male, female, children) is available in each country. The little rectangular mark indicates that the intensity data is available as well and the double circle shows that the data on multidimensional deprivation for children is also available.

Data sources and methods used for data collection differ from survey to survey. For details, please refer to the official documentation through the links listed at the end.

The data has been validated by three-stage approach. First, the data has been input by the poverty economists
in the World Bank for each country, and that data has been sent to UNICEF and UNDP officers who are in charge of each country for the validation of the data. After integrating modification suggested from these two agencies, the data has been sent to the SDGs focal point personnel in the counterpart in each country for their final approval. Regarding those countries where we do not have any country offices such as OECD and EU countries, the World Bank collected the information based on the data source available online, and sent it directly to the official counterparts of each country.

EU countries and some Latin American countries such as Costa Rica and Ecuador conduct the survey and produce multidimensional indicators every year, but most of the developing countries, especially African countries have published multidimensional measurement only once in the last 10 years, or spasmodically when the funding was available. Therefore, for these countries, it is difficult to state definitely when the next data is available.

Following is the list of national data providers responsible for producing the data at the national level.