Huffington Post
Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region in the world, followed by South Asia, according to a new measure developed by Oxford University, with support from the U.N.
The measure, called the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, will replace the Human Poverty Index in the United Nations' upcoming Human Development Report, due out this October. (hat tip to The Economist)
For the past 13 years, the U.N.'s annual report has used the Human Poverty Index, which employs three basic dimensions -- length of life, knowledge and standard of living -- to measure poverty in developing nations.
But this year, the U.N. will use Oxford's Index: a "multidimensional picture of people living in poverty" that complements income measurements "by reflecting a range of deprivations that afflict a person's life," including whether a household has a decent toilet, clean water to drink within 30 minutes on foot, electricity, school-aged children enrolled in school and whether any member of a household is malnourished, say researchers.
A household is counted as "multidimensionally poor" if it is deprived of over 30 percent of the ten indicators used by the MPI. Researchers have calculated the percentage of people in each country who are poor, and of the 25 poorest countries, 24 are located in Africa.
The countries below are, according to the MPI, the 10 poorest countries in the world:
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