There’s more to consider than just a family's income when it
comes to measuring poverty and its impact on a child’s well-
being, a new study finds. The report by Child Trends Center, a
non-profit research organization, is the first to examine the
impact of geographic variations and cost of living on child
outcomes. “Not only is income important,” said the study’s co-
author Nina Chien, “but income in context of where the family
lives.” The current federal poverty guidelines do not consider
cost of living variations, assuming that a dollar in San
Francisco buys the same goods and services in rural Nebraska.
The Child Trends Center study says this gap is hindering poor
families' ability to receive the aid they need, like food
stamps, State Children’s Health Insurance and other government
assistance programs. Another study estimated that within a
sample of 98 cities, if costs of living were considered,
eligibility for Head Start would increase by 227,000 families
and eligibility for the National Lunch Program woul