I will take up your challenge to answer your specific questions and try to be specific and solution oriented. By the way, I graduated from UCSC in Biology in 1981. Many people define poverty in primarily material terms. For them, poverty can be eliminated by redistribution of wealth. Neither in themselves are satisfactory or for that matter effective.
Poverty is more complex.
Within families there is a breakdown from individual despair and isolation. Simply, you just get tired of surviving day after day. It takes its toll on the creative spirit. The loss of values is also found in middle-class and wealthy communities, but material poverty there is not a major problem. I would like to submit that this phenomenon of community disintegration is also happening in many affluent areas as well.