Poverty lines are widely perceived as occupying a central role in poverty analysis. In fact, setting a poverty line often receives the bulk of attention and intellectual effort in studies of poverty. This paper reviews the uses to which poverty lines are put. It discusses the different methods for constructing a poverty line and the implicit and explicit assumptions in each approach. The choice between various methods of construction is related to the intended use of the poverty line. The paper suggests that some of the attention paid to finding a “precise” location of the poverty line is misplaced. All poverty lines will retain an element of arbitrariness, and aconvincing analysis of poverty is built on a whole sequence of steps withthe poverty line being just one of them