I really liked this answer someone wrote on Quora…
In America, 97% of the people classified as “poor” by the US Census Bureau, own a color TV. Three quarters of them also have a car, air-conditioning in their home, and own a VCR or DVD player. They also have running water, sanitation and, of course, electricity. All of them have access to health care. I am not quoting these facts in order to deny the poor in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, face genuine hardship and difficulties. However, for most, these difficulties are of quite a different order than the world’s poorest people. In 1990 the World Bank first drew a “$1 a day” line in the sand, to show an absolute poverty income level of the world’s poorest people. To allow for inflation, this unimaginable level of deprivation, in 2005 was revised to $1.25. There are now 1.4 billion people living at this level of extreme poverty in the world, who are “poor” by an absolute standard tied to the most basic of human needs. Almost all of them live in the 48 UN designated LDC countries: 33 in Africa, 14 in Asia and the Pacific and one in Latin America.
