China creatively implemented the precision poverty alleviation policy in 2014 and has made significant achievements in reducing population in poverty and poverty reduction, which is remarkable in the anti-poverty history of the world. As the key area of poverty in China, the Yellow River Basin is in urgent need of an overall and systematic analysis of its poverty status and poverty alleviation situation. Based on the data of 356 county-level administrative units and using ArcGIS and geographical detector tools, this study found that: (1) Rural areas in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin showed typical characteristics of poor population, deep poverty, and spatial agglomeration of population in poverty. (2) Poverty distribution of the rural Yellow River Basin showed clear spatial heterogeneity; the intensity of the influencing factors basin-wide and in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the basin was different; and the explanatory power of the economic factors to poverty was stronger than other factors. The interaction between some factors showed a synergetic effect of 1+1> 2. (3) Environmental poverty led to economic poverty, which in turn caused social poverty, and social factors are not conducive to improving the environmental poverty, and thus a “poverty loop” was formed in the rural areas of the Yellow River Basin. Environmental factors were the basic causal factors of poverty, economic factors were the leading factors of poverty development, and social factors were the key factors for solving the problem of rural poverty.