a regression exercise instead.<sup>8</sup> Therefore, it is expected that the new 2011 PPPs better reflect the spatial price differences of these particular economies.<sup>9</sup> For this reason, we think that poverty estimates need to be calculated based on the most up-to-date information on relative prices.<sup>10</sup> As Jolliffe and Prydz (2015) mention, there is a presumptive trade-off when changing the poverty line since it can be perceived as an intention to accelerate the achievement of specific goals (e.g., the World Bank’s goal of eliminating global poverty by 2030) instead of improving poverty measurement and cross-country comparison. However, the authors show that this trade-off is not relevant as the poverty headcount based on the 2005 PPPs changes slightly when using 2011 PPPs.

Second, the method used to estimate the current $2.5 and $4 per person per day regional poverty lines has not been properly documented. No description has ever been published about the source of the underlying official poverty lines used in the analysis or the robustness of the regional estimates. Gasparini, Cicowiez, and Escudero (2013) explain that these lines are obtained as the unweighted median value of the official national poverty lines of all countries in the LAC region converted to US dollars using 2005 PPPs.<sup>11</sup> Moreover, even when including a relatively large set of countries from LAC, several countries were excluded from the estimation of the $2.5 and $4 per person per day poverty lines in 2005 PPPs. For instance, Brazil, which represents approximately 38 percent of LAC’s population, was not considered in the pool of countries used to estimate the currently-used regional poverty lines. Similarly, Haiti, the poorest country in LAC, was also excluded from regional estimates of extreme and moderate poverty lines.<sup>12</sup> The exclusion of these important countries could materially affect the poverty status of millions of Latin Americans (Jolliffe and Prydz 2015).

Finally, poverty measurement has experienced a steady increase during recent years and many countries in the region, such as Chile, Colombia, and Paraguay, have updated their official poverty lines. In principle, the update of poverty lines using national CPI from the year of data collection to the 2011 reference year should not produce marked changes in poverty measurement.

> 8 Unfortunately, regressions estimated are not documented.

> 9 For a detailed description of the new ICP data see Ferreira et al. (2015).

> 10 In order to avoid being perceived as manipulating the World Bank’s goal of eliminating global poverty (based on the $1.25 per person per day poverty line in 2005 PPPs) by 2030, one could directly elude updating the line and continue measuring poverty based on 2005 PPPs and the $1.25 per person per day poverty line. However, the superiority of the 2011 PPPs with respect to the 2005 PPPs is used by Ferreira et al. (2015) as an argument to reject this option and to estimate global -and therefore regional- poverty using the most up-to-date relative prices. 11  See Table 4.2 in Gasparini, Cicowiez, and Escudero (2013) for a list of the poverty lines.

> 12  The Dominican Republic was also set aside from estimations.

6