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Larks comments on Why is it rational to invest in retirement? I don't get it. - Less Wrong Discussion
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The richest country, the United States, does no such thing. Poverty among the elderly is a big problem here. I have two friends in the 70+ region, who are trying to skimp by on around $1000 a month in Social Security + medicare and food stamps. One is currently homeless. Both would like to find a job, but neither is medically able to work any more. And these are people who worked for a long time. Not everyone gets as much from the U.S. government as they do. I have another elderly friend who is selling her apartment in NYC and moving to Iowa to have enough money to live on.
I also have a few more retired elderly friends who are quite well off. This is because they were successful in their careers (some very successful) and saved a lot of money along the way. I can think of one other who's still actively working at a high-paying job.
The goal is to end up like the happy, well-off retired folks and not the ones living out of their cars or on the street.
The extreme poverty line is around $1.25 a day, and the poverty line at around $2.50. They are well above both. By global standards, they're not poor; merely relatively poor to other Americans (which is to say, not poor at all)
Good luck finding any place in the United States you can live in for $1.25/day. Minimum wage is livable >90% of the time, but Nigerian wages are not.
Cost of living needs to be considered. It costs more to live in the United States than Mexico. Someone who's living on the street, and eating out of garbage cans, or who is hungry because they can't afford to buy food is objectively poor. And yes, this sort of poverty exists in the United States; and it disproportionately occurs among the elderly.
That is already PPP adjusted. Here is a good blog post on the subject by Will Crouch.
Even PPP adjustment doesn't tell the whole story. It's not legal to live like you're in a Harare slum in the US, whether you're willing to or not.