The aim of this paper is to expose the ideological manipulation of the concept of poverty in the associated standard of living measurement tools in the development literature. The World Bank and its partners in the war on poverty fail to locate and analyze the critical contextual factors at issue in the prevalence and persistence of poverty. This is a problem that we trace back to a fundamental concern with advancing economic interests tied to global capital, interests that are in direct conflict with the stated concern of the World Bank and its partners in the project of cooperation for international development for world poverty — to reduce the incidence of absolute poverty an alleviate its worst effects. The implication of our findings is the need to construct methodologies and measurement techniques that are closer to the poor and their real living conditions. This, we conclude, is a matter of methodology and policy.
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