Here's the actual paper, which does name its units (international poverty line): http://www.salaimartin.com/media/pdf/Africa_Poverty_NBER.pdf http://www.salaim

Here's the actual paper, which does name its units (international poverty line): http://www.salaimartin.com/media/pdf/Africa_Poverty_NBER.pdf http://www.salaimartin.com/media/pdf/Africa_Poverty_NBER.pdf And criticism of their results from someone working on producing similar numbers for the World Bank: http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/is-african-poverty-falling http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/is-african-poverty-fall... I must say that it irks me that they would use such a easy-to-understand-and-wrong ($1/day, when they mean "below the international poverty line") unit in writing without specifically qualifying it.