One distinction that I like to make is that in my own life, I've definitely been poor, but I've never been in poverty. I've been a student and I've been unemployed almost without money to even get food occasionally, but I've always been in a position where I could ask my (middle-class) mother for a bit of cash to tide me over (or even move back 'home' for a while.

I have never had to ask, but that option/safety net has always been there. That, to me, is the difference between merely being poor (a transient state) and living in poverty (no simple escape route).

Hell, even simply knowing that you can escape poverty is an advantage that some people don't have.