Government report: 1.65 million Israelis living below poverty line

from Haaretz

By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent

Some 1.65 million Israelis live under the poverty line, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Insurance Institute (NII).

The report, which examines data from 2006, shows a very slight decrease in poverty rates in the past year, as the percentage of families living under the poverty line dropped from 20.6 percent in 2005 to 20 percent. The total percentage of Israelis who live under the poverty line dropped from 24.7 percent to 24.5.

However, the percentage of children living under the poverty line has grown - from 35.2 percent in 2005 to 35.8 percent.

A total of 404,000 families, 1.65 million citizens and 766,000 children live in poverty.

Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog presented the report with director-general of the NII, Yigal Ben-Shalom. They insisted that the report shows that the poverty situation in Israel has stabilized.

However, the only noticeable drop was among senior citizens. The percentage of impoverished people in this group fell from 24.4 percent to 21.5 percent - mostly due to an increase in government stipends for the elderly.

The report also shows that it has become harder for people living beneath the poverty line to close the gap. The poverty gap index - which measures the severity of poverty among the poor, or, alternatively, how many poor people have drifted further from the poverty line - has gone from 33.1 percent to 33.8 percent. This is a sharp increase from 1999, when the ratio was 25.8 percent.

According to the NII, the income per capita among the poor has dropped, despite the perceived economic growth in Israel. On the other hand, the top tenth percentile in Israel has doubled its income in 2006 in comparison to the two lowest tenth percentiles.

Hadash Chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh said he was shocked that the government ignored the most drastic rise in poverty, which was among the Arab sector, where 50 percent of the population and 60 percent of the children live under the poverty line.

Barakeh warned against celebrating the fact that poverty hasn't gotten worse, saying that the data is problematic, since thousands of citizens were pushed barely above the poverty line by receiving a few tens of shekels, or less, each month.

The last report, released in January, dealt with the period between the middle of 2005 and the middle of 2006, and showed that growth in poverty rates had slowed for the first time in a decade.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed that by 2010, the number of poor people in Israel will fall by 15 percent, or 250,000 people.