Warmest season’s greetings to all our readers and colleagues focused on multidimensional poverty and its reduction. Here is a roundup of the latest news from OPHI and the MPPN as we head towards the end of the year. We look forward to sharing our research in multidimensional poverty and further details of the growing number of national MPIs around the world in 2020.
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OPHI wins The Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Oxford
We were delighted to learn in November that the University of Oxford was among 22 UK educational institutions announced as winners of The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for research carried out by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
Her Majesty The Queen approved the award of The Queen’s Anniversary Prize in the thirteenth round of the scheme, which has recognised the work of OPHI on the measurement and understanding of global poverty and the contribution of its applied research to improving policymaking in poverty reduction by governments and international agencies.
The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes reward work by UK colleges and universities that shows excellence and innovation, and delivers real public benefit. The Prizes are granted every two years by The Queen and are the highest national Honour awarded to UK colleges and universities.
Read more here.
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Register now for a new online course
on designing an MPI
OPHI and UNDP are excited to offer a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Designing a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). This free five-week course, starting on 24 February 2020 and facilitated in English, draws on the handbook How to Build a National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Using the MPI to inform the SDGs that was launched by UNDP and OPHI this July.
Using country and sub-national examples, the course offers detailed practical guidance for policymakers, technical experts, and other stakeholders on how to design an MPI at the national and local levels. Participants will learn to develop an holistic multidimensional poverty index that integrates income-based inequalities with deprivations across health, education, housing, sanitation, employment and livelihoods, food security, environment, and other living standards to inform the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Register here.
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Photo: Julieth Méndez
September in New York: the MPPN at the 74th UN General Assembly
At the UN General Assembly in September, our MPPN Side Event chaired by the President of Costa Rica brought together 19 high-level speakers to share their experiences of using multidimensional poverty indices to lead progress in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG1: end poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Speakers came from countries at all stages of the development trajectory: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Chile, Curaçao, Costa Rica, Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Seychelles, South Africa and the United States. They were joined by leaders from international agencies – UNDP, League of Arab States, Sida, UN-ECLAC and UNICEF. Speakers discussed using MPIs within their poverty reduction strategies, and provided details of the full MPI cycle from listening to the voices of people in poverty to building indices, to implementing the MPIs as governance tools for budgeting, targeting, transparency and coordination. Child poverty was recognised as a distinct issue requiring a dedicated policy response. Speakers also recognised the importance of wellbeing and raised the importance of adapting MPIs to keep in step with the development of middle-income countries.
The Side Event took place in the context of the SDG Summit and the launch of the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 (GSDR), which highlighted the importance of multidimensional poverty measurement and the role of science and data in achieving sustainable development.
Read more about the launch here.
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Photo: Maarit Kivilo | OPHI
OPHI Visiting Professor Juan Manuel Santos discusses leadership with students
Juan Manuel Santos, the former President of Colombia and Nobel Peace Laureate, visited Oxford in November as part of his three-year Visiting Fellowship. He met with students including groups from the Said Business School, the Oxford Department of International Development and the Latin American Centre to discuss the challenges of leadership and governance. Topics covered included his experience as head of state in implementing Colombia’s peace process and fighting multidimensional poverty, the importance of persuasion, political institutions, multilateralism, inclusive growth, public private partnerships, as well as the need for humility and empathy among leaders.
Photos here.
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Photo credit: Comunicación Social Mides
MPI update
On 26 November, the Government of Guatemala officially presented the Guatemala MPI developed by the Ministry of Social Development with technical assistance from OPHI and support from the European Union. Based on data from the National Survey of Living Conditions 2014 (ENCOVI 2014), the report revealed that 61.6% of Guatemalans live in multidimensional poverty. Each is deprived in more than 30% of the 17 indicators grouped under five dimensions. For the Guatemala MPI the five dimensions encompass health, food and nutrition security; education; decent employment; housing; and access to basic services. The Guatemala MPI found that the incidence of rural poverty (82.5%) was double that of urban poverty (40.3%). The intensity of rural poverty was 50.8% of possible weighted indicators; in urban areas it was 42.8%. Fully 80% of indigenous people were MPI poor and 50.1% of non-indigenous people.
Angola made progress towards a national MPI. As part of a technical visit in the last week of November, OPHI’s Ricardo Nogales and the National Institute of Statistics (INE) presented a report on Multidimensional Poverty in the Municipalities of Angola in Cunene and Angola’s capital, Luanda. The report, supported by UNDP Angola, proposes three ways to identify municipalities that deserve priority in terms of public resource allocation. It found that 65 of the 164 municipalities in Angola's 18 provinces have a 90% incidence of multidimensional poverty. INE will continue to work on a national MPI due out in 2020.
More details (Spanish) on the Guatemala launch here and MPI here.
Angola report (Portuguese) here.
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Photo: © FAAEColombia
OPHI staff news
Felipe Roa-Clavijo, Researcher and Global Policy Network Lead, has won one of the most prestigious social science prizes in Colombia for his doctoral thesis on agrarian movements in Colombia 2013–2016. The award was made by the Alejandro Angel Escobar Foundation, which has awarded prizes to recognise and support research that contributes to science and innovation in Colombia since 1964.
Read more here.
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Image design: Sandra Pérez
Dimensions Magazine is out now
The new issue of Dimensions, our free online magazine available in English and Spanish, is out now! This issue looks at two national MPIs in Viet Nam and Sierra Leone and a state-level MPI in Oaxaca, Mexico. It includes an update on sOPHIa – a social enterprise linked to OPHI that works with businesses to identify and fight MPI poverty among their employees – and details from multidimensional poverty research in the USA by the United States Census Bureau.
Download: here.
Subscribe to Dimensions: here.
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Save the date
The 8th MPPN Annual Meeting 2020 will take place in Santiago, Chile between 22 and 24 June 2020, and will be hosted by the government of Chile. Formal invitations, a concept note and an agenda will be sent out shortly. For any questions, please contact mppn@qeh.ox.ac.uk.
More details: here.
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