the benefit of povcal is that given the mean welfare measure and several points on the lorenz curve for any dataset povcal will estimate the parameters of the entire lorenz curve which in turn permits poverty simulations based on any poverty line the analyst chooses expressed as monthly per capita figures in international ppp dollars povcal is most widely known for allowing national poverty and distributional data to be made comparable at the international level through the use of international absolute poverty lines such as the dollaraday usd ppp and twodollaraday international standards however nothing prevents povcal from being used to evaluate and simulate poverty at other poverty lines including relative ones