How are We doing on Poverty and Hunger Reduction? A New Measyre of Country-Level Progress

Progress toward eradicating poverty and hunger is patchy and generally too slow. New impetus is needed to meet internationally accepted goals, better informed by recent progress and challenges. The United Nations Millennium Development Goal No. 1 (MDG-1) aims to halve the proportion of people affected by poverty and hunger by 2015. The five indicators officially employed to assess progress toward MDG-1 reflect different deprivations of basic human capabilities, and progress in one domain does not guarantee progress in each of the others. Building on the statistical methodology of the widely-adopted Human Development Index, a new composite indicator – Poverty and Hunger Index (PHI) – that combines on all 5 measures together provides original insights on poverty and hunger trajectories. A number of findings emerge from the analysis, suggesting that the new index can play an important role in informing the policy debate on the prominence of all MDG-1 dimensions.