Increasingly the poor have been receiving federal assistance through goods and services rather than cash. These goods and services have not been counted when measuring the income and poverty of the recipients. This report examines three proposals to change the manner in which poverty is measured. All include ways to calculate the value of noncash benefits. The examination of each proposal is based on the following five questions: (1) What is the basis for defining income?; (2) Are the methods valid?; (3) Do the values that are assigned actually represent the benefits that are received?; (4) What is the quality of the data and analytic procedures used to assess benefit values?; and (5) Are definitions used consistently across key steps of poverty measurement? It was found that changes in these factors could change the classification of a family's level of poverty. (VM)