There's a weird disconnect between poverty in terms of income and poverty in terms of access to basic needs. For instance, American Men are much more likely to be homeless than American Women[0]. There's all sorts of interesting gender/race/age disparities related to homelessness[1]. The effect of income appears to be outweighed by the effects of gender, race and age.
I should have been clearer than simply stating _desperately_ poor; I intended to convey that they are in a state of poverty where there are few other options available.
Someone once argued to me that homeless women are much more likely to get assistance, in the form of organizations or from begging, than homeless men. Never verified but seems intuitively true
having been homeless and been around homeless groups before - being homeless is very unsafe (deadly) for women, so many will pick the path of slavery instead. (or abusive partners, whatever. It's not really like there's a difference)
after all, both involve being used as an object and thrown away, but with the latter one's likely to at least get food first and probably drugs to help survive.
It's to do with the fact that society objectifies men as objects of success while women are objectified as sexual objects for having a vagina and womb; hence a woman cannot go any lower in value than her womb and vagina while an unsuccessful man can just go the botomless pit as far as society is concerned.
Considering homeless population is like 80-90% men I think it's fair to say poverty is not the whole story. Men have some expenses women don't and women by far can receive more social benefits than men (some welfare programs are exclusive to women).
And the world stats aren't relevant as we're talking about psych studies that mostly take place in the US.
Stats on poverty by sex and age in the United States: https://www.statista.com/statistics/233154/us-poverty-rate-b...
Worldwide, the gap is even wider: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/14...