Plight of Israel’s 783,600 children living in poverty

One four Israelis live in poverty and one in three of these are children, a new report reveals. Some 420,100 families, or 1,651,300 Israelis, lived below the poverty line in 2008, Israel's National Insurance Institute’s 2008 Annual Poverty Report found. This compares with 1,630,400 in 2007, according to the report published yesterday. But although the report shows little change since the beginning of the financial crisis, the figures paint an extremely grim picture especially for children. Last year, 783,600 of these one in four needy Israelis were children, an increase from 773,900 the previous year. Aid agencies are now worried that the global economic crisis will push more still below the poverty level by 2010.

Ida Yaffe of Jaffa is one of the faces behind the statistics. She and her three children, including one who is paralyzed, live on an NII allowance of NIS 2,500 a month. "The children come from school, and it's not every day that I can give them lunch," she said. "I can't give them basic things that every parent gives his child,” she told the local Haaretzonline news agency. “If there's a class trip, they don't go. My daughter was supposed to have gotten a certificate, but I didn't have money to pay, so she didn't get it.” Even though there might have been a percentage reduction, the fact is that Israel still has a very high percent of people living in poverty," Dr. Roby Nathanson from the Macro Center for Political Economics in Tel Aviv told The Jerusalem Post. "There has been almost no change to the overall picture."

Itzhak Perry, head of the Social Workers Union, said that the report did not accurately reflect the reality on the ground. "From the lines outside social welfare offices, it is clear to see that many families have been seriously hurt by the economic crisis. Either they have lost their jobs or have had their salaries significantly reduced, suddenly finding themselves joining the millions of others already living below the poverty line," Perry said. "These families do not appear on the report, because its figures are from 2008 and the recession only started in the last months of that year."

SOS Children’s Villages supports more than 300 people in Israel through two SOS Children’s Villages, three SOS Youth Homes, and two SOS Social Centres. The children, aged from 6-18, come from all over the country and are referred by social welfare services after being declared children at risk. Many are placed in our villages under court order. Some of them are orphans. The organisation also has two children's villages in Palestine.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children