Developing the Country’s First Ever Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI)

Built from the data collected from UNDP’s National Citizen Survey (NCS) 2022-23, Citra, together with University of Oxford’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), launched Sri Lanka’s first ever Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) in September 2023.

The MVI assesses vulnerability in three critical dimensions: (1) Education; (2) Health and Disasters; and (3) Living Standards. The three dimensions are measured by 12 indicators, namely: school attendance, male years of schooling, female years of schooling, physical health condition, water source, food stock, experienced disasters, adaptive capacity to disasters, asset ownership, unemployment, precarious and informal employment and household debt status.  By combining the deprivations encountered by each household in each of these 12 indicators, the MVI presents a picture of vulnerability. 

Policy Report

The Policy Report titled ‘Understanding Multidimensional Vulnerabilities: Impact on People of Sri Lanka’, released in September 2023, presents the findings of the MVI. The report is a collaborative effort between UNDP’s Citra and OPHI, with technical guidance from the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) Sri Lanka. (Full report could be accessed at…)

The MVI is an indicator that attempts to capture the intersecting and overlapping vulnerabilities households face, going beyond measures of financial vulnerability to also consider educational, health-related, and other kinds of vulnerabilities in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of the challenges faced on the ground. The MVI serves to complement Sri Lanka’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index (NMPI), together providing a holistic perspective of the deprivations faced by households in Sri Lanka. 

 The key findings of the MVI 2022-2023 are as follows:

• Approximately six in ten (55.7 percent) people in Sri Lanka are multidimensionally vulnerable. 
• Among the 12.34 million individuals facing multidimensional vulnerabilities, a considerable 10.13 million are rural residents, notably concentrated in the Eastern, North, and North Central provinces.
• Debt status, adaptive capacity to disaster, and years of schooling are the primary factors driving Sri Lanka’s MVI. 
• 33.4 percent of the population experience deprivations in debt-related indicators, including getting into debt for essential needs like food, medical care, and education, as well as pawning jewellery or selling items. 
• Nearly half of Sri Lanka’s population (48.8 percent) lacks disaster preparedness, a key vulnerability factor aggravated by accelerating climate risks. 
• Male and female years of schooling are the third most contributing indicators to the MVI, highlighting the critical need for key interventions to enhance education levels among both genders. 
• 35.6 percent are vulnerable and deprived in relation to water sources.
• Several districts, including Ampara, Batticaloa, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Nuwara Eliya, Puttalam, and Vavuniya, exhibit notable multidimensional vulnerability values, with over 65 percent of their populations identified as multidimensionally vulnerable. 

Way Forward

The report offers a set of key policy and programmatic recommendations, drawn from the analysis of the MVI 2023 results and enriched by insights gathered through the FGDs.

Policymakers are encouraged to use insights from the National MPI into their interpretation of MVI data in order to identify synergies between the two indices and effectively address both vulnerability and poverty. The goal is for both MVI and MPI insights to drive adaptive policy and programmatic responses, ensuring inclusivity and leaving no one behind on the path to human-centered sustainable development.

Additionally, a key recommendation is that an official National MVI could serve as the government’s official metric for measuring multidimensional vulnerability, with the potential to comprehensively reflect the current socioeconomic landscape. A repeated National MVI, that builds on and goes beyond Sri Lanka’s official National MPI, can serve as a reliable monitoring and assessment tool.