Frances Stewart is Professor Emeritus of Development Economics at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). She was Director of ODID from 1993-2003 and Director of the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) at the department between 2003 and 2010. Professor Stewart is a member of OPHI’s Advisory Committee.

María Emma Santos is the co-author, along with Sabina Alkire, of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), published by UNDP and OPHI since 2010. She is a researcher of the National Scientific and Technological Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), based at the Institute of Economic and Social Research of the South (IIES), Department of Economics, National University of the South (UNS), Argentina, and a research associate at OPHI at the University of Oxford.

Dimensions spoke with Ana Helena Chacón Echeverría, Second Vice President of Costa Rica, about collaborating with the private sector and how the government is using the national Multidimensional Poverty Index. This indicator, she claims, will make the distribution of public resources more efficient, and the hope is that it will also encourage transparency in institutional activities.

Colombia was one of the first countries to officially establish a multidimensional poverty measurement in 2011. Tatyana Orozco, ex-director of Colombia’s Department for Social Prosperity, spoke with Dimensions about how the Columbian government is using the Colombian Multidimensional Poverty Index (C-MPI).

Chile launched an official Multidimensional Poverty Index in 2015. A year and a half later, this index was modified to add local environment to the Housing dimension and a fifth innovative dimension: networks and social cohesion. Dimensions Magazine spoke with Heidi Berner, Undersecretary of Social Evaluation of the Chilean Ministry of Social Development, about these additions and the way the State is using the MPI in the design and implementation of public policies.