During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama stated that a modern federal poverty measure was needed to "more accurately reflect the costs of living and the economic pressures on American families." The need for a new measure has been recognized for some time. The central critique is that the current poverty measure is based on outdated assumptions about family expenditures and resources. Measure by Measure offers a state by state comparison of poverty rates between the current measure and two modern measures based on National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations.