The Individual Measure of Multidimensional Poverty

The Individual Measure of Multidimensional Poverty (IMMP) is the result of more than a decade of research at the Australian National University. It is an innovative approach to measuring poverty able to provide decision-makers with detailed, nuanced and relevant information needed for effective policies, programs, and services.

The IMMP aims to:

> identify which social groups experience poverty and how deprivations manifest in lived experiences;

> uncover the structural causes of poverty; and

> develop appropriate responses to alleviate and end poverty for everyone, everywhere.

Designed to be sensitive to gender and to assess the different ways women and men experience poverty, the individual-level methodology enables the IMMP to reveal how other social characteristics – disability, age, geographic location – intersect to shape the nature of poverty. Significantly, the IMMP is designed not only to assess the extent of poverty, but to uncover the nature and structural causes of poverty.

The IMMP uses three survey tools to assess multidimensional poverty: the Dwelling Survey, the Household Survey and the Individual Survey. The most important of these is the Individual Survey of Multidimensional Poverty, which is currently assesses across fourteen dimensions of poverty.