“…Other studies have also used composite indices approach to develop national and provincial indices of multiple deprivation (Klaseen, 2000;Noble et al, 2006;Noble, Barnes, Wright, and Roberts, 2010). More recently, Finn et al, 2013;Woolard et al, 2013;Stat SA, 2014;Alkire and Santos, 2014;Ntsalaze and Ikhide, 2016;Mushongera et al, 2017;Frame et al, 2016;Rogan 2016;Pasha, 2016;OPHI, 2015;OPHI, 2017) have considered multidimensional poverty vis-a-vis gender dimension, youth dimension and cash grants at the national level using the Alkire and Foster (2011) technique and presenting mostly descriptive inferences. The Alkire and Foster MPI methodology has many advantages, which include its decompostional ability of helping to know how much each indicator and each dimension contributes to overall poverty and its ability to allow poverty comparisons across countries and regions of the world, as well as within-country comparisons between regions, ethnic groups, rural and urban areas, and other key household and community characteristics .…”