Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 24 September 2020 to Question 91694, what criteria his Department used to determine the bottom billion poorest people.

There is no internationally recognised definition of the "bottom billion" in the way that there are for other poverty measures, such as the World Bank's International Poverty Line which considers all people living on under $1.90 a day. The term was originally coined by Professor Sir Paul Collier who defined it as the countries least able to escape poverty, but it is also sometimes defined as the world's billion poorest citizens. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) analysis suggests that over time, these definitions converge. The FCDO takes into account a wide variety of factors when considering whom are the most vulnerable countries and individuals.