Definition of "pauperism" [pau•per•ism]

• The quality or state of being a pauper. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Were one able to follow the example set us, among cities, by Leipsic (where the word pauperism is absolutely non - existent), we should have effectually turned the corner out of the ill - kept vagrant road into which Henry VIII first led us, when "pauperism" began to be a sore in the midst of England's healthy body of citizens."
• "According to government statistics, it is said ninety-eight percent of the American people are living from day to day on their wages, which means that a loss of employment would result in pauperism for all but two percent."
• "-- The scientific remedies for poverty and pauperism, that is, the scientific methods of dealing with the various dependent classes and of preventing their existence, now form the subject-matter of a great independent science, the science of philanthropy, which, as we have already seen, may be considered a branch of applied sociology."