Official poverty methodologies differ from other poverty measurement methods in the sense that the official ones are more often used as a benchmark to develop new policies as well as to evaluate the performance of existing programs. Europe has the tradition and the practice to use relative...

US poverty is much higher than poverty in Europe when a relative poverty measure is used. Using an absolute poverty measurement method, the picture looks different: poverty in some European countries is higher. This paper estimates poverty rates for all the countries of the (old) EU and the USA...