The Movement for Democratic Women in Israel (TANDI) has published an open letter to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Welfare Minister Meir Cohen urging them not to cut child allowances and for a comprehensive support and allowances programs in order to adapt them to recipients’ real needs.
According to TANDI approximately 860,900 children live in poverty in Israel, most of them Arabs. A cut in benefits is expected to add another 40,000 to 50,000 children to this number, and a family with two children will lose NIS 88 per month as a result of this cut; a family with four children will lose NIS 264; a family with six children will lose NIS 920. Also Families with four children or more, where both parents work full time earning minimum wage, will fall below the poverty line as a result of the cuts. 64% of working-age, impoverished families in Israel are families in which at least one parent is employed and 40% of children in Israel are defined as being at risk of poverty compared with an average of 20% in OECD countries.
A TANDI International Women’s Day rally in Nazareth (Photo: Al Ittihad)
In recent years, child allowances have become a major source of support for families living in poverty. This is partly due to the fact that the existing benefits for the poor in Israel do not adequately meet their most basic needs. According to “Haaretz”, among the proposals submitted by Lapid to Prime Minister Netanyahu on Thursday were provisions that would limit government child allowances to NIS 150 per child. This would hit families with young children particularly hard. The current National Insurance Institute child-allowance payment structure is based on two separate formulas, depending upon whether the children were born before or after the end of May 2003. Benefits for children born before June 2003 are currently more generous: NIS 175 per month for the first child; NIS 263 for the second; NIS 295 for the third; NIS 459 for the fourth; and NIS 389 per child for the fifth and beyond. For those children born from June 2003 onward, the NII payment is currently NIS 175 per month for the first child; NIS 263 for the second, third and fourth; and NIS 175 for the fifth and beyond. That would all change, however, if Lapid’s current budget proposal is accepted: the payment would be NIS 150 per child, no matter how many children a household has. If the cut is in effect for the second six months of this year and all of next, it would result in a total saving to the state treasury of NIS 4 billion.
A family with four children under 18 who were all born before June 2003 would lose NIS 592 per month in child-allowance payments. A family with four children born after the 2003 cutoff would lose NIS 354 per month. For most poor families, the impact could be expected to be especially difficult.
