If you want to find out what poverty means, ask people.
Poverty is, in their view, a matter of inequality.
It means being less well off than others in society. This perspective is explained by their ideology. For those of us who do not believe in the idea of an automatic entitlement to the wealth and income produced by others, relative poverty is of far less interest. Our interest is in the actual standard of living of those who endure some measure of real deprivation, independent of their relative position in society. Clearly, those operating from a social welfare perspective do not use a blatant ideological rationale for their choice of poverty measures.