I&#x27;m always wary of the numbers that are put out. There has been long history of fudging numbers to fit a narrative. The unemployment numbers in the US comes to mind as such an example.<p>So, the question is how realistic is the extreme poverty line. And this doesn&#x27;t help it much:<p><pre><code>  The World Bank first introduced a global poverty line in 1990, 
  setting it at $1 a day. 
  It was adjusted last in 2008, when the group raised it to $1.25 a day.
</code></pre>
$1 seems like such a convenient number to pick!<p>An interesting graph will be to plot the extreme poverty threshold against inflation _in_emerging_countries_.<p>With the falling emerging market currencies and extreme inflation (hyper-inflation perhaps), I don&#x27;t think that $1.90 a day cuts it.