Multi-dimensional poverty in El Salvador

This year El Salvador's government began publishing a measure of multi-dimensional poverty.  The concept gets away from just looking at poverty as an income level, but instead looks at conditions of life including housing, access to health services, education and employment.   Under this new multi-dimensional approach, a household is considered in poverty if it is lacking in 7 or more of 20 basic categories.    Under this definition of poverty, the poverty rate in El Salvador is 35.2%

The 20 basic categories and the percentage of Salvadoran households who lack the minimum level for each category are:

Looking at poverty this way gives policy makers a much more sophisticated way to think about poverty and recognizes that all of these factors are necessary for citizens to enjoy a sense of well-being.

The distribution of households suffering from multi-dimensional poverty varies significantly by department:

Percentage of households in poverty