The number of people living in acute multidimensional poverty rose for the first time since the global index was created in 2010, reaching 1.2 billion in 2026, according to the update published on Monday 12 October by the United Nations Development Programme and the University of Oxford.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 616 million people in this situation, or 51.4% of the population covered in the region. Globally, the number rose by 51.5 million compared with the previous update on a comparable basis.
Children account for 617 million of those counted, slightly more than half of the total. The report also places 83% of poor people in rural areas, where access to water, electricity, health services and schools often remains more limited.
The index does not measure income alone. A person is considered poor when their household suffers deprivations covering at least one third of ten weighted indicators linked to health, education and living conditions. The 2026 dataset covers 108 countries and 6.3 billion inhabitants, or 78% of the world population.
The increase should be interpreted with caution. For 95 countries without a new survey this year, updating population estimates added 15.8 million people to the total. The rest of the change combines shifts in poverty rates, population changes and differences in survey coverage.
Among the thirteen countries with new estimates in 2026, five significantly reduced the share of their population affected. In Angola and Zambia, the rate fell but the number of poor people rose, as population growth outpaced the pace of reduction. In Nigeria, progress recorded in the 2010s was reversed during the 2020s, with both the rate and the number of people affected rising.
The report also identifies 33 countries that halved their index value in under fifteen years, six of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In Eswatini, the share of people in multidimensional poverty fell from 38.7% to 8.0% over fifteen years, according to the comparable series used by the authors.