Multidimensional poverty and deprivation: using individual versus household data

Most existing multidimensional poverty indices, like the global MPI, use the household as the unit of identification of the multi-dimensionally poor, meaning that the multidimensional poverty status of the household is equated with the multidimensional poverty status of all its members. Such an approach ignores intra-household inequalities, which are crucial, among other things, for understanding and quantifying child poverty and gender inequality. Consequently, in this chapter, we stress that one cannot be indifferent to how deprivations are distributed among household members and that there are good reasons to think about moving from the household to the individual when analyzing and estimating multidimensional poverty, especially if the goal is to adequately monitor progress towards meeting Target 1.2 and Goal 5 of the SDGs.