• The recently developed optimization module of ESCWA's online Multidimensional Poverty Index Assist Tool (MAT) accommodates advanced scenarios for guiding policy makers in how to realistically and efficiently reduce multidimensional poverty subject to resource constraints.

• Ambitious multidimensional poverty reduction targets can be feasibly reached if policy-makers are empowered to mobilize adequate resources, and channel them to deprivation pockets and substantive areas of particular salience.

• This may encompass tailoring the kind of assistance to the specific needs of the population, conditioning the assistance on appropriate deprivation-reducing household response, and targeting precisely the most-needy pockets of the population.

• Efficient public intervention should avoid wasteful spillovers on non-critical dimensions of wellbeing, and non-deprived or non-poor population groups. Public interventions that allow customized in-kind assistance and smart targeting at the level of well-identified clusters of households, attain the highest efficiency.