OPHI and UNDP regional MPI brief. Sub-Saharan Africa: an age group analysis of the 2021 global MPI

Children tend to bear the brunt of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Children (defined as persons below the age of 18) show higher rates of multidimensional poverty with well over half of multidimensionally poor people in SSA being children under the age of 18 (321 million children out of 556 million people).1 Almost 6 out of every 10 (59 percent) children are poor compared with 47 percent of adults in SSA. Based on the global MPI data for 42 countries and trend data for 36 countries, the brief focuses on the poverty levels of different age cohorts and presents the evolution of multidimensional poverty in SSA between the 2000–2019/2020 period.2 Emphasis is placed on whether the reductions in multidimensional poverty are pro-poor or not, with pro-poor reflecting that the fastest reduction in poverty in a country is occurring in the poorest areas or amongst the poorest groups