RESUMO
This is one of four Working Papers on characteristics of poor and ultra-poor people (see General Introduction). It identifies (a) food-related indicators of how many people are ultra-poor and moderately poor, and (b) these people's nutritional characteristics. To see in income is getting to "the poor", we need a "scalar" measure of "absolute" household poverty. Given normal spending patterns, "capacity to afford enough calories to maintain health and performance" best indicates absence of ultra-poverty. It normally prevails whenever household outlay -with about 80 percent spent on food- meets below 80 percent of 1973 FAO/WHO caloric requirements. If such outlay patterns meet 80-100 percent of requirements, the household is probably sometimes hungry, and certainly often unable to afford non-food needs, but seldom "ultra-poor" - at income-induced nutritional risk to health or performance. We call it "moderately poor"...(AU)
