I can think of a way to drastically increase or reduce that number: Just change the dollar threshold that makes one “poor”.
To me, if you live in a home where you have your own bed and the floors are not dirt, you’re not poor.
I can attest that your statement has a lot of truth to it.
I used to deliver furniture to the poor, as part of my involvement with the St. Vincent DePaul society, in Connecticut.
We mostly delivered furniture to apartments with TVs and air conditioners and telephones. Some of the apartments had big TVs, causing my fellow deliverymen to mutter “they don’t need this furniture”
The exceptions were for a few cases where we delivered furniture to men who had just gotten out of prison and were at a halfway house.