 The question arises of how far the resources we need to live a minimally decent life in a given national society are affected by the general level of opulence of this society. Is the social minimum higher in nations that are wealthier than others? This question is closely related to a question that has long exercised students of income and wealth distribution: Is poverty a matter of absolute income or of relative income (or both)? Many studies of poverty assume that poverty has a relative dimension. Estimates of the number of households in poverty then take as the ‘poverty line’ a level of income that is some fraction (say 50%) of average household income, adjusted for differences in household size. Thus, if the incomes of the poor at time t2 are the same as they were at time t1, and in this time average income has increased, then on this approach we would have to conclude that the people who were poor at t1 have become even poorer at t2 even though their absolute income level has not changed. This clearly makes sense only if one thinks that poverty is a matter of how well off people are in income terms relative to others in their society. However, this way of thinking about poverty invites the objection that the researcher is confusing poverty with inequality. Critics argue that if one group has become worse off in income terms relative to others then inequality has increased, but this does not mean that poverty has, especially if the group in question remains just as well off as before in terms of its absolute level of income.