Which Poverty Line? A Response to Reddy

Abstract

Some years ago a consensus emerged in the development community on the idea of an international poverty line of around $1 a day at purchasing power parity. This became the focus of the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), which calls for halving the 1990$1 a day poverty rate by 2015. In a recent IPC One Pager, ?Are Estimates of Poverty in Latin America Reliable??, Sanjay Reddy asserts that this poverty line is ?arbitrary? and ?unreliable.? He feels that the line is too low to reflect well the cost of not being considered poor in Latin America.(...)Some years ago a consensus emerged in the development community on the idea of an international poverty line of