This Technical Paper reports on the first assessments of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa based on anthropometric data collected in 19 countries for the Demographic and Health Surveys. The poverty studied is absolute poverty, which can be defined as the inability of a family to meet sufficient consumption levels to maintain a satisfactory state of health and normal growth of its children in order to avoid serious malnutrition. (The other two concepts of poverty, relative poverty and subjective poverty, are not used in this study). Statistically, any child under five years of age whose height (or weight) is more than two standard deviations below median height in developed countries is considered to be suffering from serious malnutrition. The percentages of children with serious malnutrition (and thereby of families classed as below the threshold of absolute poverty) range from, roughly, 15-20 per cent in mediumincome countries (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe) to more than 50 per ...