poverty line

The $1-a-day poverty line has long understated the true scale of global poverty. New research proposes a $21.50-a-day upper bound that would shift the focus of development policy towards broad-based economic growth.

Global poverty trends look radically different depending on the poverty line used. A new measure that doesn’t depend on ‘lines’ – the average time needed to earn a dollar – shows that global poverty has fallen sharply, by about 55% since 1990. This w...