Good question. Are there differences in cost of living across the country? If so, then income alone may not be the best indicator of poverty. Will you be considering household size? These are a couple of things that you may want to explore as well. Hope this helps!

In addition to this, you can also use Consumption expenditure as a proxy to the level of income, as it is not easy to measure the level of income. Respondents usually hide these details form the researcher. This would be a better indicator for measuring their standard of living or levels of poverty.

You should compare such a rural income with an absolute poverty line (probably rural as well). The traditional way is to compare the per capita family income (ypc) with the per capita poverty line (Z).

Then the rule of decision (to measure the poverty) will be: if ypc

Nice Contribution Hampton Gaddy