Is someone in poverty if they can afford food, housing and the things they really need, but not other things most people take for granted? Answering this question requires a judgment about where an acceptable standard of living ends and poverty begins.
Statistics can tell us how many people live in those circumstances, but not whether those circumstances should count as poverty. Even the categories themselves are not self-evident: deciding what is a need, and what is merely taken for granted, is itself part of drawing the poverty line.
