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Who lives below the line — India's multidimensional poverty, 2019-21

Goal 1 · No poverty · NITI Aayog National MPI · India

Poverty is counted in money.
It is lived as missing things.

India's National Multidimensional Poverty Index does not ask what a household earns. It asks whether there is a toilet, a cooking gas cylinder, a school-going child, a bank account, a solid roof. Between 2015-16 and 2019-21 the share of people deprived on enough of those at once fell from 24.85% to 14.96%.

DATA YEAR · 2019-21 (NFHS-5) · COMPARED WITH 2015-16 (NFHS-4) · SOURCE: NITI AAYOG
A household courtyard in rural India

Deprivation is measured at the household, across 12 indicators in 3 dimensions.

14.96%
Multidimensionally poor
Down from 24.85% in 2015-16
−9.89
Percentage points
About 135.5 million people
0.066
MPI value
Nearly halved from 0.117

Which deprivation is doing the work

Share of India's population deprived on each indicator. This is the useful view: a district officer cannot act on a headline rate, but can act on a cylinder, a toilet or a roof.

Indicator
0% of population deprived50
Share
Cooking fuelStandard of living ~44%
HousingStandard of living 41%
SanitationStandard of living ~30%
Years of schoolingEducation 16.65%
School attendanceEducation 9.10%

Selected indicators from the 12 in the national MPI. Figures reported as "around" in the source are shown with a tilde.

Rural and urban, then and now

The fall was faster in rural India in absolute terms — and rural incidence is still close to four times the urban rate.

Rural

32.59% in 2015-16
19.28% in 2019-21
13.31 points lowerStill 1 in 5

Urban

8.65% in 2015-16
5.27% in 2019-21
3.38 points lowerBars share rural scale

Key points of concern

The kitchen is the binding constraint

Cooking fuel is the single largest deprivation in the index, ahead of housing and sanitation. It is also the one that maps most directly onto a health outcome, since solid-fuel smoke falls on the women and small children in the room.

Cooking fuel ~44% · Housing 41% · Sanitation ~30% deprived

Intensity fell far less than incidence

Fewer people are poor, but those who remain are nearly as deprived as before: average intensity moved only from 47% to 44%. The households easiest to lift out have been lifted. The remainder are deprived on more things at once.

Incidence −9.89 points · Intensity −3 points

The survey underneath is five years old

The report was published in 2023, but it measures 2019-21, because that is when NFHS-5 was in field. Any statement about poverty in 2026 using this number is an extrapolation, not a measurement. NFHS-6 will move the baseline, not this report.

Report 2023 · Reference period 2019-21 · Comparator 2015-16

Five states carry most of the fall

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan recorded the steepest declines in the number of multidimensionally poor, with Uttar Pradesh alone accounting for about 3.43 crore people. Which means national progress is, largely, progress in five places.

36 states and UTs · 707 districts · 12 indicators
Read nextWho still cooks on wood, dung and kerosene
SourceNITI Aayog, National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023 Data year2019-21 (NFHS-5), compared with 2015-16 (NFHS-4) Published17 July 2023 UpdatesIrregular — tied to the NFHS survey cycle URLhttps://www.niti.gov.in/
Method. The national MPI uses the Alkire-Foster dual-cutoff approach across three equally weighted dimensions — health, education and standard of living — represented by 12 indicators. A person is counted as multidimensionally poor when their weighted deprivation score exceeds 0.33.
  • The report is the second edition; the baseline was published in November 2021 using NFHS-4.
  • Indicator-level shares marked with a tilde are reported as approximate in the source.
  • The rural and urban bars share one scale so the two panels can be read against each other.
  • This measures deprivation, not income. It is not comparable with the poverty line.

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