Dollar a Day Revisited

The article presents the first major update of the international 1 a day poverty line, proposed in World Development Report 1990: Poverty for measuring absolute poverty by the standards of the world's poorest countries. In a new and more representative data set of national poverty lines, a marked economic gradient emerges only when consumption per person is above about 2. 00 a day at 2005 purchasing power parity. Below this, the average poverty line is 1. 25, which is proposed as the new international poverty line. The article tests the robustness of this line to alternative estimation methods and explains how it differs from the old 1 a day line.