the main difficulty with this criticism lies in how to operationalize the multidimensional notion of poverty responding to this issue some offer to reduce multidimensionality to a few basic dimensions the united nations development programme undp human poverty index is an attempt to go beyond income in constructing a composite poverty index the millennium development goals also recognize the multidimensional nature of human wellbeing through the deployment of a broad range of objectives and targets the contention here is that the nature of poverty is countryspecific along these lines it has been argued that by using a common international poverty threshold that would be applicable to the poorest countries one would necessarily underestimate global poverty