During the first year or so after the 1995 issuance of the report of the National Research Council's Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance, there appeared to be relatively little government response to it. Since then, however, there has been a good deal of research and related activities to lay the groundwork for possible adoption of some form of the Panel's recommendations as a new official poverty measure for the U.S. A number of relevant papers resulting from this research are available on the Census Bureau's Experimental Poverty Measures Internet site. This research is summarized in the first part of this paper; a summary of the Panel's main recommendations forms the second part.