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More than a billion people worldwide live in acute poverty and 40 per cent are in countries exposed to violent conflict, according to a UN-backed study published on Thursday.

The finding comes in the latest update to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), jointly published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, UN News reported.

The MPI was launched in 2010 and this year’s edition features research across 112 countries and 6.3 billion people.

It found that 1.1 billion are living in acute poverty and a staggering 455 million are in countries experiencing war or fragility.

“Conflicts have intensified and multiplied in recent years, reaching new highs in casualties, displacing record millions of people, and causing widespread disruption to lives and livelihoods,” said Achim Steiner, the UNDP Administrator.

Poverty reduction tends to be the slowest in countries most affected by conflict, where poverty is often the highest.

Countries at war have higher deprivations across all indicators of multidimensional poverty, such as lack of access to electricity, adequate water and sanitation, education, and nutritious food. 

For example, over one in four people in conflict-affected countries lacks access to electricity, compared to just over one in 20 in more stable regions. Similar disparities are evident in areas such as education, nutrition and child mortality.

Furthermore, deprivations are markedly more severe in nutrition, access to electricity and access to water and sanitation, for poor people caught in conflict, relative to those who are impoverished in more peaceful settings.

The MPI also revealed that over half of the world’s 1.1 billion poor are children under the age of 18, or 584 million. Globally, nearly 28 per cent of children live in poverty, compared with 13.5 percent of adults.