Poverty has raised growing interest due to its various spatial aspects and implications. Inequality and poverty represent the main elements development strategies are aimed at, the complex but controversial relationships between them having drawn much attention during the past years, once decision factors understood the importance of the interconnections between them for the success of this process. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relationship between poverty and inequality, analysing the way in which a high degree of social and economic inequality influences the different forms of poverty manifestation. We made use of a three-dimension analysis: actual poverty (as expressed by absolute and relative thresholds), inequality of income distribution and regional distribution of these phenomena. Economic growth and distribution of income are connected through a bidirectional relationship, the incidence of poverty decreasing when economic growth overlaps a stable distribution of incomes. The effects are even more spectacular when the study area records a change for the better in the income distribution with respect to the poor population. Although, poverty has diminished, the feeling of poverty remains strong both in relation to the income of other co-nationals and to that of other European countries, Romania continuing to be, unfortunately, one of the poorest countries in EU-28. The investigation carried out revealed the fact that the economic development of the country has been accompanied by a fast decrease in absolute poverty but also by a slight increase in relative poverty. Romania faced an extremely high poverty risk rate in rural areas, a situation which was caused by more factors, such as: demography (negative migration balance, aging population), accessibility (lack of infrastructure and difficult access to basic services), education and employment (low employment rates, high share of those working in agriculture and those working on a seasonal basis). Instead, cities had values below the European average, which once again proves the important role that regional and sub-regional metropolises play.