The Multidimensional Poverty Index takes into consideration factors such as access to education, nutrition, clean water, and electricity. Photo: isafmedia (flickr)

Global poverty just rose by 21 percent, if you take into account “multidimensional poverty,” according to a recent The Christian Science Monitor article.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, is the result of collaboration between the United Nations and the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI). The 2010 UN Human Development Report uses the MPI alongside its other poverty and inequality indexes to achieve a more accurate definition of poverty.

Instead of placing the focus on income per capita, the MPI also takes into account factors like access to health care, nutrition, education, sanitation and other basic necessities. In fact, the MPI measures and combines ten indicators, with poverty defined as lacking three or more of the factors.

This new definition includes those who may be above the poverty line but still lack basic needs. For example, in Ethiopia, the OPHI says that "… 39 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day. But 90 percent are ‘multidimensionally poor,’ or lacking at least three of the 10 indicators." See the OPHI press report for more information and statistics that demonstrate how the MPI changes the demographic of poverty in several countries.

Jeni Klugman and Sabina Alkire created the MPI because they wanted a more comprehensive way to measure poverty. "The point is you can have rapid progress on the income poverty side without commensurate progress on other side," and "[t]here are some things money can't buy... It might not buy electricity; it might not buy a public health system, or an education system," they explain to The Christian Science Monitor correspondent, Jina Moore. (You can follow Moore's personal blog, where she documents current events and issues in the African Great Lakes region and the continent as a whole.)

While the MPI marks an improvement over the previous methods of poverty measurement, many experts still find fault with it. Critics argue that the MPI is still an oversimplification of what it means to be poor. One opponent, Don Stillers, an economist for USAID, argues for "the ongoing need to pay attention to evidence on each major dimension of poverty in each country we work in," rather than depending on a single standardized system of measurement, reports the The Christian Science Monitor.

Though the MPI is not a perfect assessment of poverty, it could enable a more complete and effective evaluation of global poverty. To learn more about MPI's poverty rankings, check out this interactive map.

The MPI would examine factors besides how much money this Nepalese woman makes picking tea. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps.

What exactly does it mean to be poor? Is it strictly a matter of income, or do other factors count as well, like education and health?

Oxford's new look at poverty may be able to help us better understand which hardships challenge the world's poor. The Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, takes a more holistic approach to measuring poverty than previous poverty indexes, which have focused mainly on income, reports Planet Money. It was designed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in partnership with the United Nations.

The MPI examines three major aspects of poverty: education, health and living standard. More specifically, it considers 10 indicators that affect well-being on a household level, like quality of nutrition, type of cooking fuel, and if a family has a latrine. Ideally, the result is a detailed portrait of the nature and intensity of poverty.

So far the MPI has been applied to populations in 104 developing countries, which are home to nearly 80 percent of the world's poor. Check out OPHI's cool interactive world map to explore the poverty indicators for these countries.

Economists like the World Bank's Martin Ravillion question the MPI's methodology, claiming that it's a mistake to combine so many disparate factors into a single index as though they are equal in value. Ravillion describes the MPI's weakness like comparing "apples and oranges" here on Oxfam's From Poverty to Power blog.

But Sabina Alkire, co-creator of the MPI, insists on the importance of considering multiple aspects so we can understand not just who is poor but "how they are poor." Multidimensional models like the MPI could potentially teach us about correlations between various factors -- for example, does the fact that a child is malnourished relate to whether he or she is educated? OPHI explains how economists, governments and NGOs can apply the new index to their endeavors:

The MPI can be used as an analytical tool to identify the most vulnerable people, show aspects in which they are deprived and help to reveal the interconnections among deprivations. This enables policy makers to target resources and design policies more effectively.