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Comment by quan | Hacker News Reader

Is there any inflationary effect to the $1.25/day figure that has been used since the 1980s? It's not clear from the article whether it's adjusted for inflation.

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"PPP" refers to Purchasing Power Parity. The default option is the PPP rates for consumption in 2005 estimated by the World Bank’s Development Data Group.

So yes, it does account for inflation, assuming equal inflation across whatever basket of goods was chosen as the reference point for PPP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

The threshold is inflation-adjusted: http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?0,6

I'm a bit confused about that as well. What's worse is that the background papers that the world bank website references seem to all 404: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/...

Better luck here: https://wdronline.worldbank.com/handle/10986/6781

I came here to ask the same thing. Taking in consideration they use the US$1.25/day measurement since 1981 [1], today this value should be US$3.28/day [2] (based on US inflation between 1981 and 2015).

Given that, I'd love to know the real value. Maybe it is still a positive perspective, but I think it'd be more realistic (or, at least, accurate). :-)

[1] http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?1

[2] http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

It's already inflation-adjusted.

Where did you find that out ceras?

Go to the site linked in the article: http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?1

See column titled "Pov.line (PPP$/day)"

Click on column title to bring up this text: http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/Docs/dictionary.htm...

And there they give you the definition of PPP, aka purchasing power parity, and tell you they are using 2005 rates of consumption.

I couldn't find any correlation to inflation. I put in $2.00 in the calculator, and the millions of people in poverty came close to doubling.

Maybe I'm missing something?

When I put $2.00 into the calculator it only showed me 2011. Maybe I'm missing something? I wish they would elaborate on the calculations on the site

Who is down-voting all the inflation related questions? This shouldn't have to be explained to someone with downvote-level karma, but disagreeing with a comment's point of view is not a good reason to downvote it.

Apperently it started at $1, was raised to $1.25 in 2008 an now they are planning for $1.90 which'd likely skyrocket absolute poverty numbers.

Further, none of the cited sources seem to be past 2008...

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