Rethinking poverty
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Although living standards have generally improved globally over the past three decades, stark and persistent inequalities remain – both between countries and within them, particularly between urban and rural areas. These gaps highlight where efforts to reduce poverty need to be intensified to ensure that everyone has the means for a decent life.
The study published in Nature Communications, uses data from households in 75 low- and middle-income countries, and shows that 94.9% of households lack at least one of ten fundamental living standards. Nearly two-thirds fall short on at least one-third of them. This number is notably higher than poverty shares calculated with other poverty measures and indices. These findings come from a comprehensive analysis using the Decent Living Standards (DLS) framework developed at IIASA, which redefines how poverty is measured – not by income alone, but by whether people can meet their most basic physical and social needs.
“Income doesn’t tell us enough,” explains IIASA Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group Leader, Roman Hoffmann, the lead author of the study. “It’s about whether people can meet their basic needs. When we look at who has access to essential services, resources, and infrastructure, deep and persistent inequalities become apparent.”
Unlike conventional poverty metrics, which often condense deprivation into a single score, the DLS framework evaluates ten separate dimensions of wellbeing. Seven relate to physical needs, such as housing, nutrition, and sanitation, while the remaining three concern social participation, including access to education, mobility, and communication. The approach is based on the idea that all of these needs are non-negotiable and being deprived in any one of them signals a shortfall in living a decent life.
Across the dimensions, the largest deprivation can be observed for modern means of food preparation (unfulfilled for 72.2% of households in the sample), access to health care (68.0%), adequate housing (54.8%), and adequate sanitation facilities (47.9%). About 21.3% of households in the last DHS wave reported at least one household member showing nutritional deficits, including signs of undernutrition for adults or wasting and stunting for children.
“Poverty is not one thing. It’s a web of constraints that people face all at once,” said coauthor Omkar Patange, a researcher in the IIASA Economic Frontiers Program. “If you can’t refrigerate food, get to a clinic, or afford school fees, your life is shaped by a series of daily trade-offs. That’s what we’re trying to capture.”
Regional disparities are stark. Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest attainment of decent living standards, with just 12% of households meeting two-thirds of the DLS thresholds. In comparison, that figure was 37% in South Asia, 44% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and more than 70% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Even in countries where some progress has been made, rural areas continue to lag behind. The authors found that rural-urban gaps in living standards have remained largely unchanged over the past thirty years.
“We were surprised to see that the rural-urban divide has not narrowed,” notes IIASA researcher Caroline Zimm, another coauthor of the study. “We often assume that development automatically reaches everyone, but our data shows that’s far from the case.”
Socioeconomic factors such as education, occupation, and household size also play a significant role. The authors argue that these patterns point to systemic inequalities that policies must address more directly.
The implications of the research are far-reaching. The authors call for a shift toward multidimensional poverty reduction strategies that focus not only on income, but on sustainably expanding access to the goods and services that people need to live healthy, secure, and connected lives without harming the natural environment. The study also emphasizes the importance of continued investment in household-level, subnational data to inform these efforts.
“There’s a real risk that we’ll lose the ability to track these issues if funding for surveys like the DHS program is cut,” says Hoffmann. “Without this kind of data, we won’t know who is being left behind or how to help them.”
Encouragingly, previous research suggests that meeting decent living standards for everyone would require only a small fraction of today’s global energy and material use, meaning that fighting poverty does not have to come at the cost of sustainability. Reaching that goal will however require coordinated, well-funded policies that target the most underserved communities.
“The right to a decent life shouldn’t depend on where you’re born, but without bold action, we’re at risk of letting those with the fewest resources fall even further behind,” Hoffmann concludes.
This work has produced a new subnational dataset that offers a more detailed and actionable picture of where multiple deprivations persist, and how progress (or lack of it) has unfolded over time. By making this dataset publicly available, the authors hope to support further research and inform more targeted, effective policy responses.
Reference
Hoffmann, R., Patange, O., Zimm, C., Pachauri, S., Belmin, C., Pelz, S., Brutschin, E., Kikstra, J.S., Kuhn. M., Min, J., Muttarak, R., Riahi, K., Schinko, T., Mintz-Woo, K. (2025). Subnational survey data reveal persistent gaps in living standards across 75 low and middle-income countries. Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60195-5
Researcher contact
Roman Hoffmann
Research Group Leader and Senior Research Scholar
Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group
Population and Just Societies Program
hoffmann@iiasa.ac.at
About IIASA:
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an international scientific institute that conducts research into the critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change that we face in the twenty-first century. Our findings provide valuable options to policymakers to shape the future of our changing world. IIASA is independent and funded by prestigious research funding agencies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. www.iiasa.ac.at
Journal
Nature Communications
Article Title
Subnational survey data reveal persistent gaps in living standards across 75 low and middle-income countries
Article Publication Date
11-Jun-2025
