It was announced that the Census Bureau, with the BLS, will produce an alternative measure of povert

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This is the outcome of ten years of work in the research division and at Census. As currently conceived, the BLS will produce a threshold based on BLS expenditure data and the Census Bureau will ...then estimate the proportion of households below that threshold.

I personally know someone that worked on this and he is very proud of it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/us/03poverty.html
U.S. Plans New Measure for Poverty
The federal government announced on Tuesday that it would begin producing an experimental measurement of poverty next year, a step toward the first overhaul of the formula since it was developed nearly a half-century ago by an obscure civil servant in the Social Security Administration.
While the original definition — the cash income collected by a family or individual — will remain the official statistical measure for eligibility and distribution of federal assistance for the time being, “the new supplemental poverty measure will provide an alternative lens to understand poverty and measure the effects of antipoverty policies,” said Rebecca Blank, the under secretary of commerce for economic affairs.

Advocates for the poor and technical experts have argued for years that the original standard, developed in conjunction with the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty, was anachronistic. The civil servant who created it, Mollie Orshansky, based it on the Agriculture Department’s cheapest meal plan, on the assumption that the average family spent a third of its income on food at the time. Her formula has largely remained the same except for inflation adjustments.

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1. Just a kick to show it is here.

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2. More on how it will work

It will be new, but it will be an alternative, rather than a replacement for the official measure. The national poverty threshold is an estimate of the minimum expenditure needed for a healthy diet in 1955, multiplied by 3 (based on the observation in 1965 that a family typically spends 1/3 of its income on food) and updated by the change in CPI. There are different thresholds for different family sizes, and possibly some other demographic characteristics.

The threshold started as a research project by a gov't economist (Molly Orshansky) that took on a life of its own. Although the formula seems outdated, The BLS think's that it's political prominence has made it very difficult to change. Even now with a strong recommendation from the National Academy of Science, the new approach is just an alternative.

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3. Can't rec anymore but here's a kick...

Now I'd like a little more detail on the actual formula they came up with.