This study was designed to study the structure of the critical factors of poverty in families with children with developmental disorders and the role of special education among them. The Ideology of the Soviet period legitimized "equality in poverty" through low but stable standard of living. The liberalization of government reforms after the collapse of the Soviet Union increased economic polarization in the new independent societies. Poverty for families with children with developmental disabilities has become an apparent reality. Based on the study of basic and advanced research and interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of scientific texts, we have identified three critical factors (CF) that structure poverty in these families: CF of financial distress; CF of social "exclusion" and institutional practices of special education; CF of "human resources" and "family capital". The nature of the CF is multi-dimensional. Multidimensionality of each of the factors is manifested in the fact that each of them includes a number of sub-factors that exist at several levels at the same time: macro- (governmentality), meso- (social cultural and special education) and micro- (family); the relationships between sub-factors are complicated and individualized in each family. All of these factors are critical for understanding the holistic picture of disaster and hardship leading families with children with developmental disabilities to poverty. Among all the three critical factors, the dominant role is played by a factor of macro-level: governmentality. Special education in Moldova and Ukraine is rooted in the Soviet "defectological educational model", which during long time was shaped scientifically and practically by the principle of socialist humanism, constructing a context of social exclusion in the form of "defectological square", it became a symbolic result of unrealized "utopia." However, inclusive processes in European education, caused by neoliberal reforms and lack of a new theoretical thinking have put new questions regarding the role and the place of special education in structuring and reproducing poverty. Research in the applied problem continues.