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Abstract
The aim of this article is to disseminate knowledge about poverty among elderly people with implications for social work practices and research by reviewing the existing qualitative research literature. The tasks were to describe the issues and processes that lead individuals into poverty on individual, community and political levels, and to describe the experiences of poverty from the well-being perspective. The results suggest that the issues and processes leading to poverty can be identified on different levels in various societies although the number of studies was limited. On the individual level, being female, being single, having a low level of education, short working history and poor health status are quite clear indicators of poverty. On the community level, rural residents and minorities especially face many issues leading to poverty. On the political level, the leading issues causing poverty among elderly people are partly associated with different kinds of welfare reform. As an experience, poverty implies many kinds of exclusion from physical, social and mental well-being. Poverty, deprivation and social exclusion are inextricably linked when poverty is viewed from a subjective or relative poverty concept perspective. Future quantitative research on poverty among the elderly people could analyse the broader mix of different issues and the likelihood and level to which they link to poverty. In addition, the comparison of experiences among different age groups would be significant for social work practices. It would probably be very useful if various participating evaluation methods could be created to assess the impact of various policy programmes and decisions on the subjective poverty of the elderly in Nordic countries on a regular basis.