Increasing interest has focused on new ways to measure material well-being. Traditional poverty measures have been  inadequate to characterize well-being because they don’t account for many direct and indirect costs of living. Many of the most salient issues in current poverty research, such as the effects of family structure  and  the effects of welfare reform, are concerned with understanding how these costs come into play. This requires the use of valid well-being measures to gauge  the effects of income, program and family changes.