In recent years, several Latin American and Caribbean countries have created their own Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), according to the needs of each country, establishing their own thresholds and indicators. For example, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico have their own MPIs, which go beyond simply measuring income and include dimensions that are important to their national contexts, assessed using own measurements developed for their populations in accordance to their level of development. Countries such as Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Paraguay are actively working on creating their own MPIs over the next few years.

The application of MPIs in different countries in the region has resulted in many public policy design and assessment contributions. The methodological innovations of indicators include the following features:

1. The ability to conduct disaggregation of statistics, which are necessary to improve design and targeting of social services, for example, being able to disaggregate poverty in accordance with population groups, regions and dimension.

2. The promotion of better and increased inter-sectorial coordination and cooperation, as well as improved monitoring, control and assessment of public social spending.

3. The design of comprehensive programs that have an impact on numerous hardships.

4. An increase in the demand of more efficient administrative services to obtain improved data. Likewise, by enabling the measurement of poverty intensity and multidimensional inequality, the applications make it possible to improve implementation, monitoring and assessment of policies aimed at closing gaps.