Poverty Rate Measurement: International vs National Standards

The use of a standard poverty line to measure poverty is often questioned. This is because the Government of Indonesia through Statistics Indonesia (Badan Pusat Indonesia: BPS) routinely calculates the national poverty line to measure annual progress in development achievements. On the other hand, international organisations, such as the World Bank, also release the results of poverty line calculations for a number of countries including Indonesia by using an approach based on purchasing power parity (expressed in US$ PPP) in a certain base year.