Islamabad: More than 38 per cent of Pakistan’s population was living in multidimensional poverty in the latest survey included in a 2026 global report, but the underlying data are from 2017-18 and do not show the country’s current poverty rate.
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Programme’s 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) update puts Pakistan’s poverty rate at 38.3 per cent. It estimates that 96.3 million people would be affected in 2024 if that survey-based rate is applied to the country’s projected population.
The report’s estimate is based on Pakistan’s 2017-18 Demographic and Health Survey, the most recent survey used for the country in the update. The figure of 96.3 million is a population projection for 2024, not a count from a new survey conducted that year.
Multidimensional poverty captures overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards. The index classifies people as poor when their household experiences deprivation in at least one-third of its weighted indicators.
Pakistan’s MPI value was 0.198, while the average intensity of deprivation among people classified as poor was 51.7 per cent. The report also classified 21.5 per cent of the population as living in severe multidimensional poverty and 12.9 per cent as vulnerable to it.
The figures show improvement from the previous survey, conducted in 2012-13. The poverty rate fell from 44.5 per cent to 38.3 per cent, while the MPI value declined from 0.233 to 0.198. The estimated number of people in poverty in the survey year fell from 93.9 million to 87 million, although the report’s projection for 2024 rises to 96.3 million as the population grows.
Education accounted for the largest share of Pakistan’s MPI, at 41.3 per cent, followed by living standards at 31.1 per cent and health at 27.6 per cent. Among the indicators, cooking fuel and housing were the most prominent: 31.2 per cent and 30.6 per cent of the population, respectively, were both classified as multidimensionally poor and deprived in those areas.
The report cautions that country estimates reflect the year of the latest available survey and that comparisons should be treated carefully when indicators or survey years differ. Its 2026 update covers 108 countries and 6.3 billion people; it estimates that 1.2 billion people worldwide live in acute multidimensional poverty.