what does ruth mean by " the poverty she suffered as a child was a better kind of poor

Ruth explains her town was was racially divided, with an all-white school and an all-black school. The discrimination against Jews was similarly pervasive: she changed her name from Rachel to Ruth because it seemed less "Jewish". She made only one friend, a girl named Frances, with whom she spent hours talking in the cemetery. The ghosts, she recalls, never bothered her then. Frances's family was poor, but "back then it was a different kind of poor. A better kind of poor, but poor just the same. What I mean by that is you didn't need money as much, but you didn't have any neither." Some people in the town were so poor that they caught huge turtles to make soup. Ruth always had enough to eat in her house, but she was starving for love and affection, both of which were in short supply in the Shilsky household.