Nepal Poverty Rate & Human Development Index (HDI): Latest Data

Poverty and human development in Nepal are measured by several different indicators, each answering a different question. The three headline numbers people most often search for are the consumption poverty rate (how many people cannot afford a basic basket of goods), the Multidimensional Poverty Index or MPI (how many people are deprived across health, education and living standards at the same time), and the Human Development Index or HDI (an overall score for health, education and income). Each is produced by a different authority and refers to a different reference year, so they should not be confused with one another.

According to the Fourth Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS-IV, 2022/23), released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) in February 2024, 20.27% of the population lived below the national poverty line. The national Multidimensional Poverty Index, published by the National Planning Commission with OPHI, UNDP and UNICEF, put 17.4% of Nepalis in multidimensional poverty using 2019 survey data. On the human development side, the UNDP 2025 Human Development Report gives Nepal an HDI value of 0.622 and a global rank of 145th out of 193 countries.

Inequality has fallen over the long run: the consumption Gini coefficient declined to about 0.30 in 2022/23. Taken together, these indicators show a country that has cut poverty substantially since the 1990s and 2000s but still has roughly one in five people below the poverty line and sits in the middle of the global human development ranking.

The official monetary poverty rate comes from the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS), a large household survey run periodically by the National Statistics Office (formerly the Central Bureau of Statistics). A person is counted as poor if their annual per-capita total consumption expenditure falls below the national poverty line. NLSS-IV, covering 2022/23 (roughly BS 2079/80), surveyed a nationally representative sample of 9,600 households and set the new poverty line at NPR 72,908 per person per year, about 70% higher than the line used in 2010/11.

Under that line, 20.27% of the population, or roughly one in five Nepalis, was poor in 2022/23. This is down from 25.16% in the third survey (NLSS-III, 2010/11), though the decline was smaller than many analysts had expected given a decade of remittance-fuelled spending. Poverty is markedly higher in rural areas (24.66%) than in urban areas (18.34%), and it varies widely by province and by social group.

The survey also reports a poverty gap index of 4.52%, a measure of how far the average poor person falls below the line; NSO estimated that closing this gap would require about NPR 94.71 billion in transfers. Because the poverty line was revised upward for 2022/23, the 20.27% figure is not directly comparable with older headline rates unless both are computed on a consistent methodology.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index measures poverty beyond income by looking at overlapping deprivations a household faces at the same time. Nepal's national MPI, developed by the National Planning Commission with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), UNDP and UNICEF, uses ten indicators grouped into three equally weighted dimensions: health, education, and standard of living. A household is identified as multidimensionally poor if it is deprived in at least one-third of the weighted indicators.

The 2021 national MPI report found that 17.4% of Nepalis, just under five million people, were multidimensionally poor, based on the Nepal Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (NMICS) 2019. This was a sharp fall from 30.1% in 2014: Nepal lifted about 3.1 million people out of multidimensional poverty in five years, and the MPI value dropped from 0.133 to 0.074. Multidimensional poverty is concentrated in rural areas and in Karnali and Madhesh provinces.

The MPI value (0.074 nationally in 2019) combines two things: the headcount ratio (the share of people who are poor) and the intensity of poverty (the average share of deprivations poor people face). Note that international bodies such as UNDP also publish a separate global MPI for Nepal, which uses a slightly different indicator set and may report different figures; the national MPI is the government's own official measure.

The Human Development Index, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is a composite score between 0 and 1 that summarises three basic dimensions of human progress: a long and healthy life (life expectancy at birth), knowledge (expected and mean years of schooling), and a decent standard of living (gross national income per capita, in purchasing-power-parity terms). Countries are grouped into low, medium, high and very high human development bands.

In the UNDP 2025 Human Development Report, Nepal's HDI value is 0.622, ranking it 145th out of 193 countries and territories. This is up from 0.605 the previous year, moving Nepal one place higher in the ranking, and it keeps the country firmly in the medium human development category. Nepal's HDI has risen by 54% since 1990, when it stood at 0.404, driven by longer life expectancy, more years of schooling, and higher incomes.

Within South Asia, Nepal sits above Pakistan (ranked 168th, in the low human development band) but below Bhutan (125th), India and Bangladesh (both 130th), with Sri Lanka (89th) and the Maldives (93rd) leading the region. The 2025 report is themed around artificial intelligence and human choice; separately, Nepal's Gender Inequality Index was reported at 0.487 (ranked 125th of 172).

The Gini coefficient (or Gini index) measures how unequally income or consumption is distributed across a population. It ranges from 0, meaning everyone has exactly the same, to 1 (or 100 when expressed as an index), meaning one person has everything. A lower Gini therefore signals a more equal distribution. Nepal's official Gini is measured from consumption data in the Living Standards Survey.

Consumption inequality in Nepal has declined over the long run. The consumption Gini coefficient fell to about 0.30 in 2022/23, down from a peak of roughly 0.41 in 2003/04. Across the four Living Standards Surveys the Gini has been measured at about 0.32 (1995/96), 0.41 (2003/04), 0.33 (2009/10) and 0.30 (2022/23). NLSS-IV also found that the poorest 20% of the population saw real per-capita spending rise by 67.9% between 2010/11 and 2022/23, faster growth than the national average, which helped narrow the gap.

Consumption-based Gini figures tend to be lower than income-based ones, because consumption is smoother than income. Inequality also has strong geographic and social dimensions in Nepal that a single national number does not capture, including gaps between provinces, between rural and urban areas, and across caste, ethnic and gender lines.

It is common to see Nepal's poverty rate quoted as 20%, 17% or other figures in the same article, which can be confusing. The differences are not contradictions; they are different measures with different definitions and reference years. The 20.27% consumption poverty rate (2022/23) counts people whose spending is below a monetary line. The 17.4% national MPI headcount (2019 data) counts people deprived across multiple non-monetary dimensions. And the HDI (0.622) is not a poverty rate at all but an overall achievement score.

Reference dates matter too. The consumption poverty rate is from NLSS-IV (2022/23); the national MPI is based on the 2019 NMICS survey; and the HDI value in the 2025 report reflects 2023 data. When citing any of these figures, it is good practice to state the measure, the value and the year together, for example 'the consumption poverty rate was 20.27% in 2022/23'.

For students, journalists and NGOs, the safest primary sources are the National Statistics Office for the consumption poverty rate and Gini, the National Planning Commission (with OPHI/UNDP/UNICEF) for the national MPI, and the UNDP Human Development Report for the HDI and its components. Because official surveys are periodic, these headline numbers change only when a new survey or report is released, not from day to day.