The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Pauperism \Pau"per*ism\, n. [Cf. F. paup['e]risme.]
   The state of being a pauper; the state of indigent persons
   requiring support from the community. --Whatly.
   [1913 Webster]

   Syn: Poverty; indigence; penury; want; need; destitution. See
        Poverty.
        [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

pauperism
    n 1: a state of extreme poverty or destitution; "their indigence
         appalled him"; "a general state of need exists among the
         homeless" [syn: indigence, need, penury, pauperism,
         pauperization]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

26 Moby Thesaurus words for "pauperism":
   bare cupboard, bare subsistence, beggarliness, beggary,
   deprivation, destitution, empty purse, grinding poverty, gripe,
   hand-to-mouth existence, homelessness, impecuniousness,
   impoverishment, indigence, lack, mendicancy, moneylessness,
   necessitousness, necessity, need, neediness, pauperization, penury,
   pinch, privation, want