State of elderly improving slightly
Photo: Alex Kolomoisky
NII Director General Esther Dominisini
Photo: Michael Kramer
Poverty report shows rise in gaps before economic crisis
Number of poor in Israel remains stable, but National Insurance Institute's report up to first half of 2008 shows poor's situation deteriorating. NII heads fear many to join circle of poor following mass layoffs resulting from financial crisis
The National Insurance Institute's poverty report published Sunday morning showed worrying trends.
While the overall number of people living under the poverty line remained relatively stable, the outlook predicted in the report shows their situation will only get worse.
Poverty Line
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Dominisini blamed the recent rise on the economic crisis, saying, "Whether the situation gets worse depends on the continuation of the crisis. The longer it lasts, the more people might cross under the poverty line.
"There is also a new characteristic now – people who are currently categorized as middle class that were fired from their jobs. If the crisis continues and they are unemployed for a long time, their standard of life will decline and they will also be included in the category of poor."
According to the report on the period between July 2007 and June 2008, (before the global economic crisis broke out), the poverty depth index, that examines the income gap ratio between the rich and the poor, rose from 34.3% in 2007 to 34.8% in 2008.
The poverty severity index rose by 2% compared to the last report. Single-parent families experience a particularly sharp rise, while the situation for the elderly, immigrants, Arabs and youth has actually improved slightly.
Since 2005 – the period when the dimensions of poverty were relatively stable – the poverty depth and severity indexes rose by 5%-6%, meaning the population that did not climb out of poverty has actually gotten poorer.
NII Deputy Director General of Research and Planning Daniel Gottlieb told Ynet the State of Israel's poor continues to decline. "The current report shows the stabilization of poverty and a slight improvement for the Arabs and elderly.
However, this does not include the data from the months of the (economic) crisis, and in the coming report we will see a different picture. The situation now is much worse because of the crisis and also because of the war."
According to the report there were 418,000 poor families living in Israel in the above period, that included 1,631,000 people, out of which 777,400 were children – a decrease from 32.3% in 2007 to 31.8% in 2007/2008.
The number of working families under the poverty line continued to rise, from 45.7% in 2007 to 66.4% in the last report.
