Poverty statistics are a sham. What qualifies as "poor" in the USA is considered solidly middle class in Europe, and wealthy in many other parts of the world. Nobody starves to death in the USA, except in cases of extreme parental neglect.
On a side note, whose responsibility is it to help the poor? If they truly can't help themselves, private charities are infinitely better equipped to address the problem than the public sector. Certainly the trillions of dollars thrown at the problem by the government have yielded little tangible result. As P.J. O'Rourke might say "It's the wrong tool for the job. You're trying to fix my wristwatch with a ball-pein hammer."