This paper presents a profile of Sri Lanka's working poor in terms of stock and characteristics; attributes
associated with the probability of being working poor, and the reasons why the employed poor earn too little to
overcome poverty. It applies the ILO's definition of working poverty which characterizes the working poor as
those who both work and belong to poor households, and uses data from the Household Income and Expenditure
Survey (HIES) of 2006/7 for the analysis. The national poverty line developed by the Department of Census and
Statistics is used to determine whether a household is poor, but it also uses the PPP-adjusted $1.25 and $2.00 per
individual per day poverty lines to generate working poverty figures to enable international comparison.