Beyond Income: A Social Justice Approach to Assessing Poverty among Older Adults with Chronic Kidney Disease

ABSTRACT

How social workers define and assess poverty is a matter of economic and social justice. Recent conceptual and measurement advances point to a multidimensional definition of poverty which captures material, social, and political deprivations. Using data from a survey, this article describes how nephrology social workers assess poverty among older adults living with a chronic kidney disease (N = 52). Results suggest respondents already conceive of poverty as a multidimensional experience, support awareness-raising about poverty, and primarily assess poverty by employment status, income, access to transportation, and education. Opportunities to expand poverty assessment in future work are promising.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• assessment
• chronic kidney disease
• multidimensional poverty measures
• poverty

Acknowledgments

This project received human subjects approval on 9/29/2016 for ID#STUDY00004010 at the University of Georgia.

Declaration of interest

The authors have not received any funding for this research and claim no conflicts of interest.