A disproportionate burden: children living in multidimensional poverty by the global MPI 2025

Report

The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2025 covers 109 countries, which are home to 6.3 billion people, of whom 2.1 billion are children under the age of 18. Across these countries, 1.1 billion people live in multidimensional poverty – deprived in the most basic conditions of health, education, and living standards. Among them, 586 million are poor children. Although children make up only 33.6% of the population covered by the global MPI, they bear a far greater share of poverty, accounting for a disproportionate 51.0% of all multidimensionally poor people worldwide. Target 1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to reduce by half the proportion of men, women, and children living in poverty in all its dimensions by 2030. Understanding where these children live and how their experiences of poverty differ from adults is essential to ensure that the world’s youngest are not left behind in efforts to end poverty. This brief presents findings from the global MPI 2025, with a particular focus on children, offering evidence on the scale and distribution of children living in multidimensional poverty to inform targeted interventions and accelerate progress towards the SDGs.

Authors: Selden, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)
• Series: OPHI Briefings
• Place of publication: Oxford, UK
• Publication date: 2025-11-21
• Paper number: 62
• Language: English
• Keywords: child poverty; poverty measurement; multidimensional poverty index; global MPI; SDGS; disaggregation