Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index

Ike Seneres

The Human Development Index (HDI) was first published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990, for the purpose of having a composite set of statistics that would measure the standard of living, the literacy rate and the longevity rate of member countries. As a complement to HDI, the UNDP also published the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in 2010. As it was presented, the HDI already identified education as a means to increase the literacy rate, as it also identified healthcare as the means to increase the longevity rate. There was no identification of the means to increase the standard of living, but it was implied that income generation or livelihood was the means of doing so.

As it is presented now, the MPI outlines the original HDI set of statistics into three dimensions. The first dimension is healthcare, broken down into two measures, namely child mortality and nutrition. The second dimension is education, also broken down into two measures, namely years of schooling and ages of children enrolled. The third dimension is standard of living, broken down into eight measures, namely floor, assets, cooking fuel, electricity, toilet and safe water. For easy recall, I have coined the acronym FACETS for these eight measures.

I am surprised why it took twenty years for the UNDP to refine HDI into MPI, but it’s better late than never, and it seems that the waiting is very much worth it. I have been looking for a development framework that I could use in my advocacy work, and this time, I believe that I have finally found it. HDI was actually good as it is, but it has actually evolved into a better framework in the form of MPI, since the third dimension as broken down into FACETS has become very specific, and it is now possible to drill down the data into real human needs, meaning needs that are rooted in the ground, and not flying in the sky.

As I understand it, both HDI and MPI are used to measure the performance of UN member countries in fighting the war against poverty. That being the case, the data reported is always at the national level. As far as I know, no government agency is reporting the data in the Philippines at the local level. Some friends are telling me that at least one agency is doing that, but I could not find any data source so far. That means no one is doing it, or if anyone is doing it, they are not doing a good job in reporting it. This situation actually bothers me, because if no one is gathering the local data, where is the government getting the data that it is reporting to the UN?

Pardon my insistence, but as far as I know, a survey is not the same as a census. A survey simply takes samples of respondents, whereas a census gathers actual empirical and numerical data. Having said that, I wonder what kind of poverty data the government is gathering. Is it survey data or census data? As far as I know also, there is no better way in gathering census data than to start from the bottom, and then count everything all the way up, including each level of data sets. If that is the case, then there is no other way but to start gathering data from the lowest level of governance, possibly even at the barangay level.

In the MPI framework, there seems to be an apparent shift from the “accessibility” approach to the “depravity” approach, at least in the third dimension. In “floor” for instance, a household would be considered “deprived” if their floor is made of mud, sand or dung. They would also be considered “deprived” if they do not have “assets” such as having more than one radio, television or bicycle. They would also be “deprived” if they do not have cooking fuel, meaning that they are still using wood, charcoal or dung. Whereas before the trend was to talk about people not having “access” to electricity, now the talk is about them being “deprived” if they have no electricity, including toilets and safe drinking water.

As I see it now, it would be best if the local mayors could take the lead in gathering their own HDI and MPI data, not as a survey but as a census. As it looks now, it would be too ambitious to expect the more than 42,008 barangay units to conduct their own census, but it would be reasonable to think that the estimated 1,495 cities and municipalities could possibly do it. Being ranked 105th out of 182 countries in the HDI study of 2009 does not speak well of our performance. What is important now is to drill down the data and pin it down, so that we could have a basis for our future actions.

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