Bihar, with its dismal scores across key development indicators such asnutrition, child andadolescent mortality,maternal Health, years of schooling,sanitationandelectricity, has topped the list of states with the largest share of Population who arepoor, according to think tankNiti Aayogs report, which has identified 25.01% of the countrys population as multi-dimensionally poor.
More than 50% of Bihars population has been classified as poor under the national Multi-dimensional POVERTY Index (MPI), followed by Jharkhand (42.2%), Uttar Pradesh (37.8%), Madhya Pradesh (36.7%) and Meghalaya (32.7%).Keralahas the least number of poor with only 0.7% of its population classified as such. Among the Union territories, 27.4% of Dadra and Nagar Havelis population is poor, according to the MPI parameters.
The data showed 51.9% of the population in Bihar is deprived of Nutrition, followed by Jharkhand (47.8%), MP (45.5%) and Uttar Pradesh (44.5%). has the lowest Percentage of population deprived of nutrition at 13.3%.
According to the report, a household is considered deprived if any child between the ages of 0 to 59 months, or woman between the ages of 15 to 49 years or man between the ages of 15 to 54 years for whom nutritional information is available is found to be undernourished.
The national MPI baseline report based on the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16) has been developed by NITI Aayog in consultation with 12 ministries and in PARTNERSHIP with state governments and the index publishing agencies Oxford Universitys Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Uttar Pradesh is on top of the list with a population of nearly 5% categorised as deprived under child and adolescent mortality, followed by Bihar (4.6%), Madhya Pradesh (3.6%), Chattisgrah ( 3.3%) and Jharkhand (3.3%). Under maternal health, Bihar tops the chart with 45.6% categorised as deprived, followed by UP (35.5%), Jharkhand (33.1%) and Nagaland (33.1%).