MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 51 of 100

Correct — option (4), 33.3. The Multidimensional Poverty Index does not ask how much a household earns; it asks in how many respects the household is deprived, and it then needs a rule for deciding when accumulated deprivation amounts to poverty. That rule is the poverty cut-off, and it is set at one third: a household whose weighted deprivation score reaches 33.3 per cent — that is, one third of the total possible weight — or more is identified as multidimensionally poor. The arithmetic behind the score is worth following, because the figure only makes sense once you see what it is a third of. The index is built on three dimensions of equal weight — health, education and standard of living — so each dimension carries one third of the total. Within each dimension the indicators share that third equally between them, so a dimension with two indicators gives each a weight of one sixth, and the several living-standard indicators carry smaller weights each. A household is scored on every indicator as deprived or not deprived, the weights of the indicators on which it is deprived are added up, and the resulting deprivation score is compared with the cut-off. One third was chosen because it corresponds to a household being deprived in the equivalent of one full dimension: a family failing on both health indicators, or on both education indicators, or on enough of the living-standard indicators to add up to the same weight, has reached the threshold. This is the method known as the Alkire-Foster approach, and it is a dual cut-off method — the first cut-off decides whether a household is deprived on each individual indicator, the second, this one third, decides whether the total is enough to call the household poor. The index itself is then the product of two numbers, the headcount ratio of such households and the average intensity of deprivation among them, so the cut-off determines both who is counted and whose deprivations are averaged.

• (1)20.33 — This figure is wrong as the poverty cut-off, but the number twenty is not idle in the framework and that is exactly what makes the option dangerous. A household whose deprivation score lies between twenty per cent and the one-third cut-off is described in the Multidimensional Poverty Index reports as vulnerable to poverty: not identified as poor, but close enough to the line that a single further deprivation — a child dropping out of school, a member falling ill — would push it over. A candidate who has read about the vulnerability band and remembers the figure twenty can be pulled towards this option, particularly with a decimal tail attached that makes it look like a computed threshold rather than a round number. The distinction to hold is that twenty per cent opens the vulnerable band and one third opens the poor category.
• (2)50.33 — Fifty per cent is likewise a real threshold in this framework and likewise the wrong answer to the question asked. A household whose deprivation score reaches half of the total possible weight is classified as being in severe multidimensional poverty, a subcategory within the poor rather than the boundary of the poor. Every household in severe poverty is already multidimensionally poor, since fifty per cent exceeds one third, but the converse does not hold, and using the severe threshold as the poverty cut-off would exclude a very large number of genuinely poor households. This option therefore catches the candidate who has met all three of the framework's thresholds and cannot recall which is which, and the way to keep them apart is to place them on a single line: twenty per cent for vulnerable, one third for poor, one half for severely poor.
• (3)40.33 — Unlike the other two wrong figures, forty per cent has no standing in the Multidimensional Poverty Index at all; it is neither the vulnerability threshold, nor the poverty cut-off, nor the severe-poverty threshold. It sits in the option set as a plausible middle value between the two real thresholds of a third and a half, and it will attract a candidate who has a general sense that the cut-off lies somewhere in that region but has never seen the reason behind the figure. That reason is the whole defence against this option: the cut-off is one third because the index has three equally weighted dimensions and one third is the weight of a complete dimension, so it is a fraction with a meaning rather than a number chosen for convenience, and no similar account can be given of forty per cent.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index measures poverty as the simultaneous experience of several deprivations rather than as a shortfall of income, on the reasoning that a household may be above an income line and still lack schooling, sanitation, clean fuel or adequate nutrition. The global index published by the United Nations Development Programme with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative rests on three equally weighted dimensions — health, education and standard of living — measured through ten indicators, among them child mortality and nutrition on the health side, years of schooling and school attendance on the education side, and cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing and assets on the standard of living side. India's national index, published by NITI Aayog, follows the same architecture and the same one-third cut-off but uses twelve indicators, adding maternal health and access to a bank account to the global ten. The headline figure is not the headcount alone: the index is the product of the proportion of people identified as poor and the average share of weighted indicators on which those people are deprived, so it registers both how many are poor and how deeply, and a country can reduce its index either by lifting households above the cut-off or by reducing the deprivations of those who remain below it.

MPSC asks the Multidimensional Poverty Index because it is the frame in which poverty is now officially discussed in India, and because it supplies clean numerical facts of the kind a preliminary paper can test: the number of dimensions, the number of indicators in the global and the national versions, the weights, and the cut-offs. This question is a fill-in-the-blank with four bare numerals, which strips away every contextual clue and leaves nothing but recall — the sort of item that is either known or guessed. That makes it worth learning the figures with their reasons attached, because a figure that has a reason survives in the memory and a figure that does not is lost within weeks. Here the reason is unusually clean: three equally weighted dimensions make one dimension worth a third, and a household that has lost the equivalent of one whole dimension is poor. Note also that this question's options are printed as bare numerals identical in both language columns, so nothing is gained or lost by reading the Marathi block, and that option (4) is printed with a single decimal place while the other three carry two, which is a printing inconsistency and not a signal.

• A household is identified as multidimensionally poor when its weighted deprivation score reaches 33.3 per cent, or one third, of the total possible weight; this is the poverty cut-off of the Multidimensional Poverty Index.
• The cut-off is one third because the index has three equally weighted dimensions — health, education and standard of living — so a third of the total weight is the weight of one complete dimension.
• A deprivation score between twenty per cent and the one-third cut-off marks a household as vulnerable to poverty, and a score of fifty per cent or more marks it as being in severe multidimensional poverty.
• The global Multidimensional Poverty Index is published by the United Nations Development Programme with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and uses ten indicators across its three dimensions.
• India's National Multidimensional Poverty Index is published by NITI Aayog and uses twelve indicators, adding maternal health and access to a bank account to the ten indicators of the global index.

• Substituting the vulnerability threshold of twenty per cent or the severe-poverty threshold of fifty per cent for the poverty cut-off of one third
• Learning the figure 33.3 as an arbitrary number rather than as the weight of one complete dimension out of three, which is what makes it memorable
• Assuming the index is a headcount alone, when it is the product of the headcount ratio and the average intensity of deprivation among the poor
• Reading a decimal tail on an option as evidence that the figure was computed, when 20.33 and 50.33 are simply real thresholds with a tail attached

The Multidimensional Poverty Index appears in MPSC papers as a numerical recall item like this one, as a components question asking how many dimensions or indicators the index has or which indicator belongs to which dimension, as an institutional question asking who publishes the global and the national versions, and as a current affairs item asking what the latest national report found for India or for Maharashtra. Because the index is reported afresh every few years, the figures for headcount and intensity change while the architecture does not, so the durable preparation is the architecture — three dimensions, ten or twelve indicators, equal dimension weights, and the three cut-offs at twenty per cent, one third and one half.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Multidimensional Poverty Index, a household whose weighted deprivation score lies between 20 per cent and the poverty cut-off is described by which of the following terms ?

  • (a)Multidimensionally poor
  • (b)In severe multidimensional poverty
  • (c)Vulnerable to poverty
  • (d)Above the poverty line on all counts

  Answer(c) Vulnerable to poverty — such a household has not accumulated enough weighted deprivation to be identified as poor, but it is close enough that one further deprivation would carry it across the one-third cut-off. A score of one third or more makes the household multidimensionally poor, and a score of fifty per cent or more places it in severe multidimensional poverty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The three dimensions on which the global Multidimensional Poverty Index is built are which of the following ?

  • (a)Income, employment and housing
  • (b)Health, education and standard of living
  • (c)Nutrition, sanitation and electricity
  • (d)Health, income and life expectancy

  Answer(b) Health, education and standard of living — the three carry equal weight, which is precisely why the poverty cut-off is set at one third of the total possible deprivation score, that being the weight of one complete dimension. Nutrition, sanitation and electricity are individual indicators within those dimensions rather than dimensions in their own right, and income does not enter the index at all.