[automatic6131]

Usually they choose a deliberately stupid measurement such as "household income below a percentage of the median wage".

This is stupid for many reasons, including (but not limited to): non-monetary, in-kind benefits being excluded, perverse outcomes such as a decline in median wages "reducing poverty" and just about guaranteed continuation of this "poverty". So left wing politicians LOVE it. It's an everlasting cudgel that can never be fixed.

[DiogenesKynikos]

It's fairly easy to fix, as long as you are willing to do what it takes to address income inequality. Reduce the Gini coefficient and poverty decreases.

[automatic6131]

That's actually my point: if you take (e.g.) 65% of median income, in a world with a Gini coefficient of 1 - perfect inequality - the rate of poverty is 0%.

[DiogenesKynikos]

But that's an edge case that will never occur in reality.

[abdullahkhalids]

> non-monetary, in-kind benefits being excluded

This seems sane. The real question one should ask is, how many people can earn a living that allows them to meet basic needs, without state support?

You can have a separate figure that out of the number of poor people (like defined in the last sentence), how many are no longer poor with state support?

[kingkawn]

all your examples would not add up to someone who meets the standards for poverty not in real world terms being too poor to live well