Poverty and Inequality in the Non-income Multidimensional Space: a Critical Review in the Arab States

Abstract

This paper examines the substantive pros and cons of the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) recently developed by Oxford University’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). It provides comparative cross-country and country-specific discussion on multidimensional poverty and inequality in the non-income space, with a special reference to the countries in the Arab region. Despite the large degree of subjectivity in selecting the dimensions and the cut-off threshold (k=3) determining the minimum number of dimensions required to identify whether or not a household is multidimensionally poor, the MPI has an important advantage of capturing more dimensions of human deprivations and includes both the level of human deprivation and a measure of the intensity of poverty using micro survey data. (…)