Extreme Poverty

I'm just now seeing articles about a study by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer published by the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan which reports that the poorest of the poor has increased 130 percent since 1996 in the United States.

Two dollars per person per day is used to describe "moderate" poverty in developing nations in the sense that local currency is converted to purchasing power parity.  The World Bank doesn't even list data for the United States.  It's a standard of living that seems impossible, even as people move in and out of this category month to month.  The worldwide estimate for 2008 was 2.7 billion people living on $2 per day or less.