Adjusting poverty thresholds for geographic differences in the cost of living has been recommended by the National Academy of Sciences and other prominent researchers. There is also agreement that doing so would be a complex statistical activity, which, given current limited availability of relevant data, could lead to erroneous poverty classifications. These results show that use of an alternative poverty measure that accounts for geographic differences in housing costs would result in a relatively large reallocation of funding from Southern states to states in the West and the Northeast. This paper makes no statements about the appropriateness or fairness of these reallocations but merely seeks to point out the importance of further research and examination of these important indicators.