Someone living today at the new poverty line does not necessarily enjoy the same standard of living as someone at the old line did in the past, however. PPP figures do not measure the affordability of a specific bundle of goods from country to country. Every country experiences its own unique pattern of inflation, and so the new poverty line, translated into local currencies at the PPP rate, will be more than enough for a square meal in some countries, and much too low in others. Looking at national price indices rather than PPPs, half of the world’s population live in countries in which $1.90 buys you less now than $1.25 did back in 2005, according to a paper released this week by Sanjay Reddy of the New School for Social Research in New York.