Multidimensional Poverty

A measure of poverty that goes beyond income alone to encompass multiple overlapping deprivations that people experience simultaneously, including health, education, and living standards. Approximately 80% of people with disabilities worldwide live in low-resourced settings experiencing multidimensional poverty, which compounds the barriers they face in accessing healthcare, assistive technology, education, and employment. In accessibility and disability research, understanding multidimensional poverty is critical because technology-focused solutions alone cannot address the intersecting challenges of limited infrastructure, low literacy, cultural stigma, and economic deprivation. Research in these contexts requires approaches that account for the full spectrum of deprivations rather than treating disability as an isolated technical problem to be solved with a single intervention.