Wiktionary
dirt-poor
a. (context idiomatic English) In a condition of extreme poverty. alt. (context idiomatic English) In a condition of extreme poverty.
Usage examples of "dirt-poor".
The Big Island of Hawaii was not rural, not urban, but dirt-poor, serving as a labor pool for cheap manual workers.
Even though they run on an hourly accounting loop, rather than one timed for the production cycles of dirt-poor Sumerian peasant farmers, and even though they've got various ethics and business practice patches, at root they're not human: They're limited liability companies.
They were all dirt-poor, with children, without husbands, without other salable skills, and most with too many miles on them to compete as prostitutes or taxi dancers.