You are right. Its just one symptom of many of our decline as a society.
I reject the poverty notion. My Dad grew up a younger sister, raised by a widowed, single mother in the 1930’s. Moved home usually every 6 months. A really good Christmas gift was an apple. The stories of “poverty” were striking to me, and completely incomprehensible to my children today.
Nonetheless, he went to school wearing a coat and tie, every day. The public school insisted on it, his mother insisted on it.
That must have been traumatic.