This is the goal of the International Poverty Line of $2.15 per day – shown in red in the chart – which is set by the World Bank and used by the UN to monitor extreme poverty around the world. To measure poverty globally, however, we need to apply a poverty line that is consistent across countries.
You can read more about how these comparable national poverty lines are calculated in this footnote. In particular, richer and poorer countries set very different poverty lines in order to measure poverty in a way that is informative and relevant to the level of incomes of their citizens.įor instance, while in the United States a person is counted as being in poverty if they live on less than roughly $24.55 per day, in Ethiopia the poverty line is set more than 10 times lower – at $2.04 per day.
Our understanding of the extent of poverty and how it is changing depends on which definition we have in mind. There is no single definition of poverty.
