For the first time in 15 years, the number of people living in multidimensional poverty has gone up. The 2026 update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index, published by the United Nations Development Programme and Oxford University, puts the figure at 1.2 billion, which is 51.5 million more than the 2025 update counted.
“The rise in poverty should be a wake-up call for the world,” said UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo. “Behind these figures are 1.2 billion people facing hardships that reinforce one another: hunger, missed schooling and a lack of clean water or electricity. This is unacceptable.”
Who is counted, and where they live
The index, created in 2010, looks past income. It tracks 10 indicators across health, education and standard of living, from nutrition and child mortality to years of schooling and access to electricity, drinking water and sanitation. Anyone deprived in a third or more of them counts as poor.
More than half of those people, 617 million, are children, and 83 per cent live in rural areas. For families in villages across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, that means a child who may go hungry, miss school and fetch water from far away all at once. The two regions account for the overwhelming majority of deprivation on every indicator.
Why the number grew
The update covers 108 countries, about 78 per cent of the world’s people. Population growth outpacing efforts to improve living standards explains part of the rise. In 95 countries with no new survey data, updated population estimates alone added nearly 16 million people to the count. The rest comes from 13 countries with fresh data, where real changes in poverty and population mix with differences in which indicators were covered.
Those surveys told a mixed story. Egypt, Nepal, Tajikistan, Angola and Zambia reduced the share of their people in poverty. In Angola and Zambia, though, population growth was faster than the progress, so the total number of poor people still rose. Nigeria shows how fragile gains can be: it cut poverty sharply in the 2010s, yet both its poverty rate and the number of people struggling have since climbed.
Proof that progress is possible
Among the 89 countries with trend data, 33 have halved their index value in under 15 years, six of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. Eswatini fell from nearly 39 per cent to eight per cent. China recorded the fastest drop among countries with available data, halving its value from 9.5 per cent to 4.2 per cent in four years, from 2010 to 2014.
The authors believe the global pledge to halve the proportion of people in poverty before the end of this decade can still be met. “We know progress is possible,” De Croo said. “Countries that have tackled these challenges together, rather than in isolation, have shown what determined action can achieve.”
Sources
- UN report: 1.2bn people worldwide live in multidimensional poverty
- Rise in poverty is 'a wake-up call for the world', UN development chief says | Nations Unies
- 1.2 billion people living in acute poverty worldwide, UN report says
