Rich Countries, Poor Kids

The way this is measured it doesn't so much address the problem of poverty in the world, but more income distribution. Plus, I don't understand this measurement, "less than half of the national median income," wouldn't that just be 50% for each country by definition of median?

"relative" has special meaning in international agencies - read the source file for further information on how UNICEF defines it. it is not a simple calculation of mean. these are important distinctions, esp when the report also found: "On average, government interventions reduce by 40 per cent the rates of child poverty that would theoretically result from market forces being left to themselves." And also: "Such variation in itself demonstrates a central point of this report: there is nothing inevitable or immutable about child poverty levels; they reflect different national policies interacting with social changes and market forces. Significant variation therefore equals significant scope for improvement."

I don't think this measurement can be fully "understood" easily without diving deep into the report. But after skimming the source, I trust UNICEF in what seems to be a statistical attempt to make the data mean something. If you use an absolute value, say $5000 annual household income, you can see how a family in New York City would be much poorer than a family in rural India, even rural Kansas. They have skewed the "relative" poverty of each country using formulae based on each country's median income (median, by definition, is the midpoint of a sample. The median income in the USA is that one household's income where as many households make more than that household as less than that household. So 50% of households make more, and 50% make less than the median. It's not 50% of each countries average household income, but I'm not sure what you meant.)