Israel continued to lag behind other capitalist countries in its level of poverty and income gaps, according to the National Insurance Institute’s annual poverty report, published on Thursday. A member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, consisting of the 30-odd richest countries, since 2010, Israel had 442,200 officially poor families in 2011 – a total of 1,838,600 people. Over them — almost a quarter of the country’s population — lived under the poverty line, including 861,000 children. Both figures were higher than the previous year, with some 24,000 children and a total of 60,000 people slipping into poverty since 2010.

The most shocking finding was the sharp rise in poverty rates among working families with two incomes or more – a population that was traditionally considered immune to poverty – a rise of over 2% from 2010.  According to the report, the negative trend of more and more working people joining the ranks of the poor continues. The rate of poverty among families in which there is at least one breadwinner reached 13.8% in 2011, compared with 13.2% in 2010. A decade ago, according to the report, the incidence of poverty among working families was just 7%. The number of poor working families as a proportion of the total of poor families has risen to 64%.  In other words, tens of thousands of couples get up to go to work in the morning, and return to poverty.

A demonstrator in front of the National Insurance Institute’s headquarters in Tel-Aviv (Photo: Activestills)

Officials at the National Insurance Institute said the figures weren’t surprising, nor was there a drastic change in the number of people seeking unemployment checks or welfare. However, the officials expressed concern over the fact “that Israel was not only unable to close the gap between poor and rich, but was letting it grow.”

More than 100 protesters who work for a company hired by the government disrupted the presentation of the report by Welfare Minister Moshe Kahlon, saying that they hadn’t received their salary for the previous month. “This information proves the fact that Welfare Minister Moshe Kahlon, the current neo-liberal government and previous governments failed in handling poverty,” said the Hadash spokesperson.