Human Poverty Index
HPI

Since 1997, the annual UNDP 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%.