A recent "Update" from the World Bank has caused widespread media celebrations of "drastic" progress against poverty in the 2005-10 period. But no such progress is visible in the data on undernutrition provided by the FAO. This paper discusses the discrepancy and, more broadly, better ways of...

The estimates of the extent, distribution and trend of global income poverty provided in the World Bank's World Development Reports for 1990 and 2000/01 are neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary international poverty line unrelated to any clear conception of what poverty...