Poverty is assimilated as inequality in access to development opportunities, with a human rights approach. Poverty and inequality are expressions of people's social and economic exclusion, so that, regardless of where the population lives, in order to have an impact on poverty, it is necessary to offer minimum subsistence services (food, security, shelter), access to basic social services and skills, so that people can choose life options consciously and freely. In other words, it is necessary to go beyond providing a decent income, which, although it is a key condition, is not the only one for achieving well-being. Likewise, poverty is experienced differently according to gender, age, ethnicity, race or place of residence. The experience of poverty is different for an older adult woman living in a rural area of the country than for a young man outside the educational system and employed in the informal sector, although they have common elements.

The proportion of Dominicans living in income poverty (around 152 Dominican pesos per day) fell sharply from 42.2% in 2012 to 30.5% in 2016 (33.2% to 25% in the same period using the international line of USD 4/day), thus recovering the level prior to 2003, when a severe financial crisis generated one million poor people, raising the income poverty rate to 49.9%. Inequality is a major challenge as the poorest 20% only have access to 4.9% of total income. In 2015, the population considered vulnerable, located between 4 and 10 USD with respect to the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), stood at 45.3%, indicating that achievements in social matters are susceptible to changes in the face of adverse events or shocks of various kinds.

In order to delve deeper into the different dimensions that affect people's wellbeing, the IDDI is based on the multidimensional poverty index developed in the Dominican Republic to complement the measurement of poverty according to income. This index is intended to strengthen social interventions and evaluate their results both in terms of poverty reduction (number of people living in poverty) and its intensity (number of access deprivations).

Some of the most relevant dimensions for calculating multidimensional poverty indexes, and therefore, areas on which IDDI focuses its work, are the following: