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THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINING an appropriate poverty line, and thus identifying those who are classified as poor, has always been one of the principal methodological issues in the analysis of poverty. Various procedures have been developed, based on alternative concepts of poverty. But a feature common to all proposed methods is a significant degree of arbitrariness in the value assigned to the poverty standard. 2 This is evident even in approaches based on subsistence needs since" there is no one level of food intake required for subsistence, but rather a broad range where physical efficiency declines with a falling intake of calories and proteins"(Atkinson (1983), p. 226). Recent years have witnessed a shift of emphasis in the discussion of methodological issues underlying poverty analysis, away from the identification problem concerned with setting the poverty standard, and towards the aggregation …