Additionally, in countries with high levels of inequality (a common problem in countries with inadequate governing institutions), much higher growth rates are needed to reduce the rate of poverty when compared with other nations. Additionally, if China and India are removed from the equation, up to 70% of the worlds poor live in fragile states by some definitions of fragility. Some analysts project that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in fragile, low-income states like Haiti, Yemen and the Central African Republic. However, some academics, such as Andy Sumner, say that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in middle-income countries, creating a paradox where the worlds poor do not actually live in the poorest countries.To help low-income earners, fragile states make the transition towards peace and prosperity, the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, endorsed by roughly forty countries and multilateral institutions, was created in 2011. This represents an important step towards redressing the problem of fragility as it was originally articulated by self-identified fragile states who called on the international community to not only "do things differently", but to also "do different things".Civil conflict also remains a prime cause for the perpetuation of poverty throughout the developing world. Armed conflict can have severe effects on economic growth for many reasons such as the destruction of assets, destruction of livelihoods, creation of unwanted mass migration, and diversion of public resources towards war. Significantly, a country that experienced major violence during 1981–2005 had extreme poverty rates 21 percentage points higher than a country with no violence.
As with all other metrics, there may also be missing data from the poorest and most fragile countries. Several alternative instruments for measuring extreme poverty have been suggested which incorporate other factors such as malnutrition and lack of access to a basic education. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), based on the Alkire-Foster Method, is published by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI): it measures deprivation in basic needs and can be broken down to reflect both the incidence and the intensity of poverty. For example, under conventional measures, in both Ethiopia and Uzbekistan about 40% of the population is considered extremely poor, but based on the MPI, 90% of Ethiopians but only 2% of Uzbeks are in multidimensional poverty.The MPI is useful for development officials to determine the most likely causes of poverty within a region, using the M0 measure of the method (which is calculated by multiplying the fraction of people in poverty by the fraction of dimensions they are deprived in). For example, in the Gaza Strip of Palestine, using the M0 measure of the Alkire-Foster method reveals that poverty in the region is primarily caused by a lack of access to electricity, lack of access to drinking water, and widespread overcrowding. In contrast, data from the Chhukha District of Bhutan reveals that income is a much larger contributor to poverty as opposed to other dimensions within the region. However, the MPI only presents data from 105 countries, so it cannot be used for global measurements.