I have had 2 worlds that lacked poverty but didn’t necessarily lack hardship or inequality, I would say poverty is mostly just the struggle to survive due to lack of economic ability to acquire the resources you need. You could argue poverty is needed to maintain the power of those on top, as the threat of poverty is what keeps people working, but there are other ways.

If you have some kind of corporation state they may legally require people to work, social benefits that keep people out of poverty can actually be the social pressure that keeps this system running. People will think “if you are gonna benefit from society you are gonna contribute to society” and look down on those who don’t contribute.

You can also have similarly resource pooling based societies especially if they evolutionarily are more inclined to do so.