In recent years Israel's welfare policy has focused on employment incentives, notably by slashing children's allotments to reduce the incentive to remain outside of the workforce. But a study conducted by the Bank of Israel indicates that entering the workforce does not guarantee an escape from poverty.
Based on analysis of employment, salary and poverty figures from July 2008 through June 2009, more than 60 percent of the nation's poor, numbering some one million, live in households with at least one breadwinner. Poverty figures for these households (known as "the working poor") in fact show a steady increase during the past decade.
"The country is lying to its citizens," said Knesset Finance Committee Chairman MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni, in response to the Bank of Israel report. "Once again it has been shown that leaving the ranks of welfare recipients and joining the job market does not change the situation and people who work very hard for their living are unable to make ends meet.
"The problem is especially acute in the chareidi public. The state does not recognize the years of yeshiva and seminary study as it recognizes the years of study of its secular citizens. As a result both husband and wife who work earn paltry salaries, and are unable to extract the family from the cycle of poverty. On the other hand there are people earning as much as an entire neighborhood."
Rabbi Gafni said the issue has come up several times before the Finance Committee. "We considered the possibility of setting up a ministerial committee to discuss the inconceivable wage gaps that exist in this country. We need a far-reaching change and a totally new attitude. There are enormous class gaps in this country that will turn into an existential social problem. The salary the CEO of Bank Mizrachi receives is enough to sustain a whole street in Bnei Brak. These class disparities have led to very difficult situations throughout history in all places, and it is imperative that the government comes to its senses on time.
"Emerging from the cycle of poverty requires an ability to get accepted to one of the positions that brings in tens and hundreds of thousands of shekels per month. Going to work solves nothing; that's all nonsense. In the State of Israel, today someone who wants to get out of the cycle of poverty has to network with the elites and the power centers just to get a decent salary that will really enable him to make a respectable living."
Deputy Health Minister MK Rabbi Yaakov Litzman said this is clear proof of the shameful injustice of the cuts in children's allotments, which he said caused "many families, including those that work for a living, to reach the point of hunger."
His dismissed out of hand claims that the chareidi public is to blame for a state of poverty rooted in a failure to enter the job market. "The Bank of Israel figures once again prove that even among those who work the poverty rate is high and rising steadily," said Rabbi Litzman.
