KINGSTON, Jamaica—After several years in gestation, the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) recently launched Jamaica’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which is intended to provide a complementary measure to traditional poverty assessments that focus entirely on income metrics and which broadly measure food consumption poverty.

The report, first published in June 2025 but using data from the 2018 and 2019 Jamaica Surveys of Living Conditions (JSLC), found that an additional 5.1 per cent to 7.3 per cent of Jamaicans were classified as multidimensionally poor; that is, they were found lacking in at least one of 15 indicators used to more comprehensively measure poverty under the MPI, of which income is one.

The MPI adds value by giving a truer picture of the multifaceted nature of poverty.

Under the traditional measure of income only, poverty incidence stood at 12.6 per cent in 2018 and declined to 11 per cent the following year.

Using the MPI, the proportion of the population that was considered poor in aggregate (that is, monetarily poor, multidimensionally poor and both monetarily and multidimensionally poor) would increase to 19.9 per cent in 2018 but register a decline to 15.7 per cent over the same period.

Jamaica joins a list of almost 60 countries which have adopted their own national MPIs over the last three decades, based on their unique circumstances and in keeping with the thrust towards creating more all-encompassing measures of progress and development.

This could not come at a more appropriate time, simultaneously with the ongoing reform of the Programme for Advancement through Health and Education (PATH) programme, which is intended to resolve the issue of, among other things, accurately identifying potential registrants.

Needs assessments could then be conducted based on multidimensional poverty and help to reconcile the seeming dissonance that attends some cases where someone is denied assistance because they are classified as not being monetarily poor enough, since their household has access to some of the latest amenities, even though they may not earn an income.

The MPI found that the largest contributors to multidimensional poverty were the contribution (or lack thereof) to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), (the absence of) sanitation, unemployment and a deficiency of water.

Meanwhile, the smallest contributors were access to health and electricity. The PIOJ’s launch follows on from the release of the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Initiative (OPHI), which provided technical support and capacity building to Jamaica in the development of its own MPI.

The Global MPI found that 2.8 per cent of the population remained trapped in multidimensional poverty, with an additional 5 per cent classified as vulnerable to it. Relative to 2019, this 2.8 per cent of the population would represent a decline in the overall proportion of those who are considered poor, falling in tandem with the decrease in the incidence of poverty, which the latest figures indicate stood at 8.2 per cent in 2024.

Poverty, inequality and vulnerability

This reference to vulnerability is also pertinent, since this acknowledges persons who are susceptible to falling into poverty at some point but are not captured in official poverty figures. Any oversight could potentially have serious implications for the development of effective social policy.

Relative depth and severity of poverty are also important for such an analysis. Poverty reduction may be thought of ideally as a systematic process by which an individual’s state of being is improved both quantitatively and qualitatively, resulting in a material transformation that enables them to access a higher standard of living and quality of life, in the hope that this will concomitantly cause a reduction in inequality.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed severe inequalities in development, has brought the need for more broad-based measures of poverty reduction into even sharper focus. In particular, the advent of the crisis highlighted the vulnerabilities of thousands of persons across Jamaica who did not earn a livelihood in a formal manner and were unable to cope with the devastating effects on the economy.

This vulnerability to economic shocks is further worsened by the poorest being underserved by the domestic financial system. In these instances, the need for more shock-resilient social protection becomes even more urgent. The incorporation of the countervailing concept of resilience in poverty assessments would also see the inclusion of metrics which are applicable to the realities facing small island developing states, like Jamaica.

Traditional schools of thought have raised the idea that development is contingent solely on one’s ability to generate income and consume the fruits of that labour.

The use of food consumption as a function of income level in the measurement of poverty helped to reinforce the long-held tradition of using mainly income indicators as a determinant of overall well-being, much like the World Bank’s universal monetary threshold below which one is deemed to be either relatively or absolutely poor.

These narrowly defined economic terms only allow us to see development merely as an end, without analysing the means of arrival at the outcome and the associated impact. Principally, development has been conflated with economic growth as a quantitative measure.

However, the limitations of this definition have been well-documented. Economic growth allows us to facilitate the accumulation of wealth; however, in order for real development to occur, this wealth should flow into programmes and projects which allow us to alleviate the plight of society’s most vulnerable, marginalised and dispossessed. Indeed, the reduction of poverty and inequality should be accompanied by a thrust towards more inclusive growth.

The ideal approach towards poverty and inequality reduction should make some reference to its multidimensional nature and level of inclusivity, which entities like the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), which provided funding for Jamaica’s MPI, argue that its Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) does by focusing on poverty as a multidimensional concept and not just capability deprivation.

Effective poverty measurement is a cross-cutting endeavour consisting of a wide range of aspects such as access to health care, nutrition, sanitation, access to financing/credit, education, degree of technology penetration, social justice, environmental protection, among other variables which allow us to expand the range of human freedom, in keeping with the postulations of Amartya Sen’s capability approach encompassing political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security.

Meaningful development through poverty and inequality reduction must be able to increase our available options to effectively function from an economic, environmental, social and political standpoint. The launch of Jamaica’s MPI represents a welcome first step towards that goal.

Keenan Falconer is an economist with experience across Jamaica’s public and private sectors and the multilateral financing space. Send feedback to keenanjfalconer20@gmail.com.