The inference is that poverty may have a different social significance in countries of similar income levels and that richer countries may have greater scope for engaging in a national debate about what poverty is and who should be classified as poor. Setting a poverty threshold is therefore a technical exercise of an extremely political nature, which can serve an increasingly important social cohesion goal, as countries’ average living standards improve and grow. Locally weighted regression lines approximate the economic gradients of both sets of poverty lines, above USD 1.25/day.