The purpose of "Focus" is to provide coverage of poverty-related research, events, and issues, and to acquaint a large audience with the work of the Institute for Research on Poverty by means of short essays on selected pieces of research. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Progress toward Improving the U.S. Poverty Measure: Developing the New Supplemental Poverty Measure (David Johnson); (2) Measuring Poverty in Wisconsin (Joanna Marks, Julia Isaacs, Katherine Thornton, and Timothy Smeeding); (3) How Well Do We Understand Achievement Gaps? (Eric A. Hanushek); (4) Transfers and Taxes and the Low-Income Population: Policy and Research Trends (Richard Burkhauser, Robert Moffitt, and John Karl Scholz); (5) Revisiting an Old Question: How Much Does Parental Income Affect Child Outcomes? (Susan E. Mayer); and (6) An Alien Parachutes into Economic Research on Low-Income Populations (Thomas D. Cook). Individual articles contain tables, figures and footnotes.