DEFINING AND MEASURING POVERTY - Development Geography - page 37

by the unweighted average of the percentage of the population without
access to safe water and the percentage of underweight children for
their age group. This was referred to as the HPI-1 and it was used
for developing countries (see Figure 1.4.1A). The HPI-2, shown in
Figure 1.4.1B, was used in relation to developed nations. A long and
healthy life was measured by the probability at birth of not surviving
to the age of 60. To this were added a measure of functional literacy, the
percentage of the population that exists below the poverty line, and the
long-term unemployment rate. Together these variables provided a
wider measure of the multidimensional aspects of poverty.
The nations of the world are shown proportional to their scores on the
Human Poverty Index in Figure 1.4.2, reproduced from the Worldmapper
series. The extreme concentration of poverty in Africa, the Indian sub-
continent and, to a lesser extent, parts of Asia, is clear from this figure.
Figure 1.4.3, which summarizes the global incidence of girls not attend-
ing primary school, shows an even stronger rich world-poor world divi-
sion (see also Chapters 1.2 and 1.3).
In July 2010 it was announced that the HPI, used in annual Human
Development Reports since 1997 would be supplanted by a new mea-
sure, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). The MPI has been
developed by the UNDP in conjunction with the Oxford Poverty and
Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and is being used from the

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Figure 1.4.2 Human Poverty (size of country shows the proportion of the
total world population living in poverty in that country).
Source : Worldmapper map number 174 © Copyright SASI Group (University of Sheffield)