A century ago, people in Canada would have considered someone poor if they did not have a horse or some other beast of burden for their work and basic transportation. Today, poverty is more likely to be measured in terms of reasonable access to buses or subways in cities or access to an automobile or truck in rural areas. Poverty is also relative in the sense that every culture has its own ideas about what is needed to be part of the mainstream of society. Being able to afford meat products is considered necessary in many western cultures, but it would not be considered very important in a country where most people are vegetarians because of their religious beliefs. Warm winter clothing and central home heating are vital in a country like Canada, and anything but a necessity in Honduras or Tahiti.
All poverty lines are arbitrary .
Both types of lines are equally arbitrary. In lines which are drawn statistically, someone has to decide what raw data to use and what methodology to use to get from the data to the poverty lines. In lines which are drawn from market baskets of goods and services, someone has to decide what goes in the basket and what does not. That is not nearly as easy as it sounds. The answers to these and a host of other questions determine the overall cost of the market basket.