Close to half a million Israelis live on the poverty line, almost half of them children, according to figures released on Tuesday by the National Insurance Institute.
Mordechai Zipori, director general of the institute, believes nothing can be done to improve their situation as long as Israel’s economic stagnation persists.
“Life around the poverty line means neither living nor dying; it means surviving,” Zipori told a news conference Tuesday.
At the moment, 488,000 Israelis live in what he termed “terrible poverty,” and of that number, 223,000 are children, he said.
They live on less than $7.50 a day, compared to the average Israeli family’s expenditures of about $50 a day.
Without financial assistance from the institute, a fifth of Israel’s population would be living beneath the poverty level this year, Zipori said.
Ronni Milo, the acting minister of labor and social affairs, confirmed Zipori’s figures. He said the situation was the same last year, and while the trend is stable, there are no real prospects for change.
But Milo sees hope in a bill shortly to be introduced in the Knesset, which would set up a state pension program for elderly people not covered by existing programs.
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