India, Oct. 13 -- The number of people living in "multidimensional" poverty has risen for the first time in 15 years, reaching 1.2 billion, as families struggle to meet their basic needs.
The finding comes in the 2026 update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published by the United Nations Development Program and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University, which measures overlapping hardship across health, education and standard of living.
The 1.2 billion figure represents 51.5 million more people than in the 2025 update. Out of this number, more than half are children - 617 million - and 83 per cent live in rural areas. Yet the update also shows that many countries continue to make progress,...