Poverty lines in history, theory, and current international practice

Working paper

This paper compares historical poverty baskets to modern food security and poverty lines. Changes in the historical baskets and indexing methods are proposed to bring historical studies into better alignment with modern measures as well as with historically based estimates of energy requirements. In addition, it is argued that modern poverty measures could be improved by emulating the historical methods.

Authors: Allen, R

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford Publisher's website
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Publication date: 2013-12-02
• Paper number: 685
• Keywords: food security; poverty line; subsistence ratio; nutritional standards; poverty measurement