Paul Cann is former Director of Policy at Help the Aged. He is now Chief Executive of Age Concern, Oxfordshire. At Help the Aged he brought together research and policy, and he was particularly involved in Help the Aged's work on pensioner poverty, social exclusion and care issues.Malcolm Dean worked on The Guardian for 38 years as a roving reporter, social affairs leader-writer and an assistant editor. He served on the Carnegie Commission on the Third Age, wrote the layperson's guide to the ESRC's Growing Older programme, and chaired a Joseph Rowntree commission on older people. He retired from The Guardian in 2006 to take up a fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he is writing a book on the media's influence on social policy.

• Contents: Step back and look: the reality of unequal ageing ~ Paul Cann; Poverty of pocket: unequal spending power ~ Tom Scharf; Poverty of place: unequal places to grow old ~ Sue Adams; Poverty of health: unequal wellbeing, ~ Anna Coote; Poverty of experience: unequal quality of life ~ Brian Appleyard; Poverty of identity: unequal humanity ~ Julia Neuberger; Causes of inequality ~ Author tbc; Joining in: conclusions and calls for action ~ Paul Cann.

"I have rarely come across a book on the included subjects so well written that I did not want to put it down until it was read to the end". Susan Venn in Ageing & Society