There are only 0.4 workers per household in the poorest income quintile as opposed to 2.1 workers per household in the richest income quintile. [1]
Also, nearly 20% of poor households are single women with children as opposed to 3.6% for rich households. (This may not be the woman's fault if the father of their children walks out on her). [1]
It's also worth noting that only 3% of full time workers live below the poverty line according to US census data. This is in stark contrast to 33% of the unemployed living below the poverty line. [2]
Similarly, the Heritage Foundation notes:
"In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year-the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year- nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.
Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty." [3]
If everyone emulated the actions of the very rich (get married, have a full time job, etc), poverty would decrease dramatically.
Citations:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
[2] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2012/table3.pdf
[3] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/08/how-poor-are-americas-poor-examining-the-plague-of-poverty-in-america
(below graphs are taken from citation #3 (top) and citation #1 (bottom))
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