RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank said that 22 percent of the Brazilians live under the poverty line, local media reported Tuesday.
Categorized as a higher-middle-income country, Brazil has around 45.5 million people living on less than 5.5 U.S. dollars a day, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper said, citing a World Bank report.
It said the World Bank changed the way it measured poverty, raising the poverty line from 1.9 dollars to 3.2 dollars for lower-middle-income countries, and 5.5 dollars for high-middle-income countries.
According to previous World Bank studies, only 8.9 percent of Brazilians lived under the poverty line on less than 1.9 dollars a day.
"Few people live on 1.9 dollars a day in Brazil, luckily. But people who are living on 2 dollars are still poor for Brazilian patterns and for higher-middle-income countries," Francisco Ferreira, a World Bank economist, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
