You're equating "food insecure households" and "lack of retirement savings" with poverty. In America, the supposedly impoverished, the "food insecure", are more often obese than not and their retirement, though boring and doesn't involve golf courses and biannual vacations, doesn't involve starvation, lack of electricity, television, heating and air conditioning, and other essentials.

Open up any book from 100 years ago on household maintenance, written usually for upper and upper middle class women. There you will learn that the laundry in the apartment building is an incredible luxury, as is the store down the street, and the fact that you can buy a loaf of bread there for about $1.50.