We also find similar reductions in poverty if we use other poverty lines.
In setting their poverty lines, most developing countries aim to count people who are poor in an absolute sense.
So in fact, only two official poverty lines exist for the period between 2004 and 2010 based on N.S.S. surveys.
This figure is arrived at by averaging the poverty lines in the 15 poorest countries, not because $1.26 spells comfort.
Unfortunately, we have been enticed into thinking in this way because the $1 and $2 a day poverty lines are so ingrained in our analysis.
Some say the furor over the poverty lines should be focused instead on the distinction between an ethical and an administrative poverty line.
"The 663 million people who moved above the poverty lines typical of the poorest countries are still poor by the standards of middle- and high-income countries".
Although microcredit has gone through many recent changes, financial services, including savings and even insurance, enable poor families to rise above poverty lines and children to attend schools.
Both poverty lines (based on data from 2004-5 and 2009-10) were calculated using the same methodology and were therefore comparable, Mr. Chaudhuri said.
"These new estimates are a major advance in poverty measurements because they are based on far better price data for assuring that the poverty lines are comparable across countries," said Martin Ravallion, director of the World Bank's Development Research Group.
Milburn, citing research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, rejects this claim, saying the evidence shows that, "on the contrary, the reduction in child poverty was very similar for all poverty lines between 55% and 75% of median household incomes".
