Then public policy is targeted to reduce poverty it can be a god thing to be defined as poor. This is true for nation states and access to international aid as well as households and access, direct or indirect, to national funds. The definers and providers of information about poverty have a powerful role to play. They also provide the basis on which to evaluate how well different policies meet poverty reduction goals and, in one way or another, much of development studies is concerned with this type of evaluation. In measuring poverty, comparability between studies is a fundamental requirement if information about poverty from different contexts is to provide a coherent basis for policy formulation...