Drawing on the cost of living surveys conducted by the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR), this paper suggests that the scale and depth of urban poverty in Zambia is underestimated by official poverty lines. Basing the official food poverty line on a national average cost for food underestimates urban poverty and is likely to overestimate rural poverty because the cost of food is significantly higher in urban areas compared to rural areas. The paper also argues that the threshold for the upper poverty line (that takes into account the cost of non-food needs) is too meagre for any urban area in Zambia, especially when taking into account the cost of housing. This is also likely to be the case in many other nations in sub-Saharan Africa, as their governments use similar methodologies to set poverty lines.

In 2006, the official food poverty line (also known as the extreme poverty line) was set at the equivalent of US$ 0.45 per person per day. But drawing on JCTR data, the calculation of the food poverty line for Lusaka in December 2006 was equivalent to US$ 0.73 per person per day. The official poverty line was equivalent to around US$ 0.73 per person per day, while the JCTR poverty line for Lusaka was equivalent to around US$ 2.22 per person per day. The official estimate for the cost of non-food needs was one-tenth of the actual cost of essential non-food needs in Lusaka because the official figure made no allowance for the costs of housing and insufficient allowance for fuel, soap, electricity and water. Even this much higher figure did not include costs for clothing, education, health and transport. The paper also discusses the cost of housing in relation to official poverty lines; the price of renting poor quality, overcrowded accommodation in an informal settlement in Lusaka was far greater than the entire allowance for non-food needs in the official poverty line.
The level at which the poverty line is set has significant implications for the extent to which Zambia can be said to be meeting the Millennium Development Goal of halving chronic poverty. The paper discusses how trends in the incidence of extreme poverty and poverty in urban areas would change if poverty and extreme poverty lines used realistic estimates for the costs of food and non-food needs.