"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 …

"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 …

"Concerns about incentives and targeting naturally arise when cash transfers are used to fight poverty. The authors … registered urban resident has an income below a stipulated poverty line. There is little sign in the data of poverty traps due to … uninformative, or even deceptive, about impacts on poverty. The authors find that the majority of the poor are not receiving help …