Poverty has been defined in relative terms for decades, because all the data shows that this has a better correlation with various measures of the effects of po

Poverty has been defined in relative terms for decades, because all the data shows that this has a better correlation with various measures of the effects of poverty, such as poor health and early death, criminality, extreme political opinions, risk of homelessness, life satisfaction etc. Example: even when corrected for purchasing power, the vast majority of people on earth are poorer than the bottom 10% in the US. Yet they tend to do much better on those measures above than absolute definition of poverty would suggest.