| Summary: | Prevailing measures of relative poverty are unchanged when all
incomes grow or contract by the same proportion. This property stems from
seemingly implausible assumptions about the disutility of relative deprivation
and the cost of social inclusion. We propose ‘‘weakly relative’’ lines
that relax these assumptions. On calibrating our measures to national poverty
lines and survey data, we find that half the population of the developing
world in 2005 lived in poverty, only half of whom were absolutely
poor. The total number of poor rose over 1981 to 2005 despite falling numbers
of absolutely poor. With sustained economic growth, the incidence of
relative poverty became less responsive to further growth. The number of
relatively poor rose, just as the numbers of absolutely poor fell.
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