Human Poverty Index / HPI

Since 1997, the annual UNDP UNDP
United Nations Development Programme The UNDP, founded in 1965 and based in New York, is the UN’s main agency of technical assistance. It helps the DC, without any political restrictions, to set up basic administrative and technical services, trains managerial staff, tries to respond to some of the essential needs of populations, takes the initiative in regional co-operation programmes and co-ordinates, theoretically at least, the local activities of all the UN operations. The UNDP generally relies on Western expertise and techniques, but a third of its contingent of experts come from the Third World. The UNDP publishes an annual Human Development Report which, among other things, classifies countries by their Human Development Rating (HDR).

Report tries to measure poverty in the Third World using a human poverty index that considers other criteria than monetary income. These are:
the probability at birth of not attaining 40 years of age
the percentage of illiterate adults
services procured by the economy overall. The quality of these is determined using two elements: the percentage of individuals without access to piped drinking water, and the percentage of children under 5 who are underweight

Despite undeniable monetary poverty, some countries manage to attenuate the impact of that poverty by access to services made available to the population. At the top of the list of such countries in 2002, were Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile and Cuba. These countries had managed to reduce human poverty to an HPI below 5%.

Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Human Poverty Index / HPI