Asian Development Bank (ADB) has offered new ways to measure poverty in Asia and Pacific and fixed US$1.35 a day as a new poverty line for the region. In a report released on Wednesday, the ADB provided a comparable rates of poverty using price data specific to the Asia and Pacific region, and, critically, to the poor. The report describes important methodological issues involved in generating internationally comparable estimates of poverty. "This is a landmark study for two reasons,' says Dr Ifzal Ali, ADB chief economist. "For the first time a thorough sensitivity analysis of the internationally comparable poverty estimates has been carried out. Second, a poverty line that is relevant specifically to the Asia and Pacific region has been adopted.' The new poverty line, called the Asian Poverty Line, is roughly $1.35 a day. A person who earns less than $1.35 a day is considered a poor. "While the $1-a-day poverty line remains an appropriate benchmark for counting the extent of extreme poverty in Asia, and the developing world more generally, in a region that has witnessed rapid economic growth it might also be time to evaluate poverty incidence using a benchmark that reflects the region's dynamism,' says Dr Ali. A major contribution of the report is to examine the sensitivity of poverty estimates to different methods for evaluating purchasing power parities (PPP). PPPs are conversion factors that ensure a common purchasing power over a given set of goods and services. "PPPs are one of the most vital ingredients in generating internationally comparable estimates of poverty,' says Dr Ali.