The second Malawi Multidimensional Poverty Index Report has revealed that multidimensional poverty slightly declined from 61.7 percent in 2021 to 58.8 percent in 2023.
The results of the survey, which is based on the 5th Integrated Household Survey of 2019-20, were presented in Lilongwe on Thursday.
Multidimensional Poverty Index is an index that measures the percentage of households in a country deprived along three dimensions; monetary poverty, education and basic infrastructure services, to capture a more complete picture of poverty.
The National Statistical Office (NSO), however, says there is no statistically significant difference between these results.
As a result, NSO says no conclusion can be drawn about whether the level of multidimensional poverty has changed.
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According to the report, the national deprivations that contribute the most to this level of poverty are related to literacy and schooling (14.7 percent), access to electricity (11.5 percent), job diversity (10.2 percent) and asset ownership (10.8 percent).
Finance Minister Sosten Gwengwe said the report is a vital instrument in Malawi’s pursuit of understanding and eradicating poverty.
Gwengwe said while customary monetary measures of poverty have provided valuable insights, they alone are insufficient to capture the complex interplay of deprivations faced by individuals and communities.
“This enables us to design targeted interventions and policies to address these deprivations. Thus the MPI has unbundled other dimensions of poverty such as deprivations in access to essential services,” Gwengwe said.
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New UNDP Resident Representative Fenella Frost said an analysis of the report by gender or sex of household heads shows that the incidence of multidimensional poverty was higher for individuals in female-headed households, at 71.4 percent, compared to those in male-headed households at 53.9 percent.
“Going forward these results should spur the government, development partners, and other stakeholders to design policy and appropriate programmatic interventions to address development needs of the poor across different dimensions of poverty to ensure no one is left behind in the development process,” she said.
