Washington, September 24

The World Bank is to raise its global poverty measure by 50 per cent to about $1.90 per day, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

World leaders are due to meet in New York City this week to approve new 15-year United Nations sustainable development goals. The first of those is to end poverty in all its forms.

The UN has said that 836 million people live in extreme poverty and about one in five people in developing regions live on less than $1.25 per day, the current World Bank yardstick.

A World Bank spokesman contacted by Reuters declined to confirm the change but said the bank was in the process of adjusting its extreme poverty line based on new estimates of purchasing power and would release the number on October 4.

The Financial Times quoted World Bank President Jim Yong Kim as saying the decision to adjust the poverty line was necessary. “We don’t think we moved the goalposts,” he was quoted as saying. “We think we simply updated the goalposts to 2015.”