You judge a country by how well most people are doing, not by how well the poorest are doing (or the richest for that matter). There will always be those that find a way to succeed and, through that success, become the most well-off.  You will always have poor people as well.  In EVERY society, throughout ALL of civilization's history, there have been poor people.  Efforts to end poverty merely drag everyone down to a common low level.  Never has it raised everyone to a common high level.  Societies have battled poverty in every conceivable way and poured the wealth of their treasuries into the problem... all to no avail.  If the smartest people on the planet have debated and discussed and implemented plan after plan after plan and poverty refuses to go away... perhaps we must admit that it never will.  Just like avarice and anger and fear will never (and should never) be purged from society, we should accept that some will always be poor and some will always be rich.  Watch the rich and ensure they remain within the law .  Watch the poor and offer reasonable aid to those who seek help in rising from poverty.  In either case, if you find fraud and abuse... punish it.  If you make all your rules based on the condition of the poor you will siphon off the assets of those better off and add them to the roles of the poor. If you make no rules to restrain the rich they will become despotic.  It snowballs and compounds to the point of system failure.  I think many people actively seek that without seeing how the resulting havoc will destroy more lives.