What determines the world’s poorest countries isn’t as clear-cut as dollars and cents. Poverty defines an economic situation in a specific moment in time, and is so multi-dimensional as a concept that any ranking is going to be incomplete and not fully representative. What’s more, categorising the poorest countries in the world isn’t as simple as ranking total wealth. Data are often hard to come by in some of the most vulnerable countries, and relying on the gross domestic product (GDP) as a ranking factor doesn’t account for all of a country’s wealth.
