A threshold level of income or consumption expenditure below which a person or household is officially counted as poor; people below it form the "below poverty line" (BPL) population.
- In India the poverty line has traditionally been anchored to a minimum calorie norm translated into a monthly per-capita consumption expenditure, with separate rural and urban lines.
- Successive expert committees revised the methodology: the Lakdawala Committee, the Tendulkar Committee (2009, which set widely used estimates), and the Rangarajan Committee (2014, which proposed a higher line).
- The headcount ratio is the share of the population below the line; poverty estimates were based on the National Sample Survey consumption data.
- A money-metric poverty line captures only income or consumption, unlike the broader concept multidimensional poverty index which adds health, education, and living standards.
- The international extreme-poverty line is set by the World Bank in PPP dollars per day; verify the latest threshold and India estimates.
The calorie-based origin, the Tendulkar and Rangarajan committees, the rural-urban distinction, and the headcount ratio are commonly tested poverty facts.
The poverty line is income or consumption based (one dimension), unlike the multidimensional MPI; the Rangarajan line was higher than the Tendulkar line, raising the estimated poor.
Income or consumption threshold for being poor; Tendulkar (2009) and Rangarajan (2014) committees; headcount ratio is the share below it.