BY JPOST STAFF—
Israel has reached its lowest poverty levels since 2003, according to the 2010 Israeli Poverty Report released on Thursday, but still faces significant problems in wealth disparity and impoverished children.
According to the report, 20 percent of Israeli families – some 1.7 million people – live in poverty. Among them are 873,000 children, representing about a third of the country’s youth.
While noting the “positive improvement in poverty indicators for the year 2010,” Welfare and Social Services Minister Moshe Kahlon called the poverty levels and wealth gaps “intolerable” and said they must change.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the report also on Thursday, saying the government needs to facilitate changes to the national budget without “bringing about the collapse of the Israeli economy.”
According to the prime minister, the government has been committed since its formation to “slimming social gaps and reducing the poverty rate in Israel.”
“An central way to handle reducing the gaps and cost of living is by allocating funds to child education. We must provide equal opportunity in the education system and invest, personally, in our students,” Netanyahu said according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Netanyahu said the government must also implement the recommendations of the committee for socioeconimic change – headed by Professor Manuel Trajtenberg – including “managing the negative income tax program, increasing participating on the labor market, continuing efforts to bring about a decline in unemployment, and further improving conditions for the poor in Israel.”
“This is no easy task,” Netanyahu cautioned.
The prime minister warned against making sweeping economic changes that may harm Israel’s economy. Those statements echo sentiments expressed by Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Bank of Israel chief Stanley Fischer.
“Just this week we learned that Israel’s economy continues to grow as a result of the sound management of all the involved parties,” Netanyahu said according to the statement.
Steinitz himself noted following the publication of the report the positive trends in the findings, such as improvements in the wealth gap.
“I can inform you that for the first time we are seeing the beginning of narrowing gaps, the beginning of a poverty-reduction trend in all populations: the elderly, children, and the two most disadvantaged groups, the haredim and the Arabs. This is an important topic we are dealing with every day,” Steinitz said during an address to the Calcalist conference.
“The most important thing is to maintain economic investment growth, which allows increases in employment, decreased in unemployment and ultimately, a reduction in gaps,” he continued.
Steinitz also announced plans to present the government with a detailed proposal in two weeks on improving financial education in Israel.
