"The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line …-fifths came from Asia, and half from China. Most of the new entrants remained fairly close to poverty, with incomes now bunched up …

"Prevailing measures of relative poverty put an implausibly high weight on relative deprivation, such that measured … poverty does not fall when all incomes grow at the same rate. This stems from the (implicit) assumption in past measures that … roles of certain private expenditures in poor settings and with data on national poverty lines. The authors propose a new …

We are not seeing faster progress against poverty amongst the poorest developing countries. Yet this is implied by … for 100 developing countries reveals an adverse effect on consumption growth of high initial poverty incidence at a given … initial mean. A high incidence of poverty also entails a lower subsequent rate of progress against poverty at any given growth …

There has been a growing interest in what have come to be termed "multidimensional indices of poverty." Advocates for … that other factors need to be considered when quantifying the extent of poverty and informing policy making for fighting … poverty. However, the author argues that there are two poorly understood issues in assessing these indices. First, does one …

The challenges faced in calibrating poverty and welfare measures to objective data have long been recognized. Until …, the idea of a "social subjective poverty line" (below which people tend to think they are poor, but above which they do … not) is arguably the most conceptually appealing way of defining poverty. However, the paper points to a number of …

such social effects on welfare call for a reconsideration of how we assess global poverty, but they do not support standard … measures of relative poverty. The paper argues instead for using a weakly-relative measure as the upper-bound complement to the … lower-bound provided by a standard absolute measure. New estimates of global poverty are presented, drawing on 850 household …

Against what standards should we judge the developing world's overall performance against poverty going forward? The …. The first measure is absolute consumption poverty, as judged by what "poverty" means in the poorest countries. The second … is a new relative poverty measure, embracing social inclusion needs consistently with national poverty lines. The …

"The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank's past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better … data. Extreme poverty-as judged by what "poverty" means in the world's poorest countries-is found to be more pervasive than … we thought. Yet the data also provide robust evidence of continually declining poverty incidence and depth since the …

The theory and evidence supporting a relativist approach to poverty measurement are critically reviewed. Various …, implying a relative poverty measure. The paper then reviews the problems encountered in testing for welfare effects of relative …