NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 12– The number of people living in acute multidimensional poverty worldwide has risen for the first time since a global index was launched in 2010, reaching 1.2 billion, with children accounting for more than half of those affected, according to a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the University of Oxford.

📻 Breaking It Down

The 2026 update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimates that 51.5 million more people are living in multidimensional poverty than in the previous update on a like-for-like basis, highlighting the challenge of addressing overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards.

Of the 1.2 billion people affected, 617 million are children, while 83 per cent live in rural areas, where access to essential services and infrastructure remains a critical factor in living conditions.

UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo said the increase should prompt renewed global action to address the interconnected hardships faced by poor households.

📌 What You Need to Know

“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,” De Croo said.

He added that countries had demonstrated that sustained progress was possible when governments addressed multiple dimensions of poverty together rather than treating individual challenges in isolation.

The report cautions that the rise in the global poverty count does not reflect a single cause.

In 95 countries where no new survey data were available for the latest update, revised population estimates increased the number of people counted as poor by 15.8 million.

The remaining change reflects a combination of shifts in poverty incidence, demographic changes and differences in indicator coverage between survey rounds.

The global MPI assesses poverty beyond income, identifying people as multidimensionally poor when they experience deprivation in at least one-third of ten weighted indicators covering health, education and living standards.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya