World Bank revises the international poverty line to USD 1.25 per day per person as per 2005 prices . This means that there are 1.4 billion people who are living globally below the poverty line.
An excellent introduction to the living standards,sources of income and expenditure of people living below the povery line is in the paper“Economic Lives of the Poor” by A Banerjee and E Duflo of MIT . This being published in 2006 covers lives of people surviving on USD 1 per day per person and USD 2 per day per person.
A complete different take on poverty line in India as followed by Government of India has been taken by Centre for Policy Alternatives. It challenges the basic elements underlying the poverty line as adopted in India and calls for a fundamental reform. This presentation gives a summary of the article.
