ABSTRACT
Poverty is precisely how we define it and how any concept is defined determines how it is quantified. Identifying the extent and magnitude of poverty is thus essentially a methodological question embodied within a measurement choice. The notion of poverty, as opposed to the features that it reflects, is quantitatively elusive – not least because it is widely recognised as possessing many dimensions. This chapter first reviews the way absolute poverty is conventionally measured at the national level and goes on to describe how international poverty, as perceived by the World Bank and as incorporated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), is defined. The problem of using official purchasing power parity (PPP) estimates for robust poverty assessment is explored and questions are raised about the validity of using the latest 2005 PPP numbers to identify the present number of poor in the world.
