Poverty

Measures of poverty can be absolute or relative. In the former case, individuals or households have insufficient income to afford the basics of life: food, shelter, heat, clothing. In the latter, poverty is measured against a proportion (say, 50% or 60%) of median income. At the global level, extreme poverty is defined by the World Bank as an income of less than $2.15 a day, in 2017 purchasing-power parity prices, at the time of writing. On this measure, the proportion of the world population in extreme poverty has dropped from more than 35% in 1990 to less than 10%.