777,400 Israeli children, representing one-third of the children in the country, are classified as living in poverty.

According to the alarming poverty report released this week by Bituach Leumi (National Insurance Institute), of the 2.1 million households in Israel, 418,000 families are below the poverty line. The “poor families” include 39,000 single parent homes.

This alarming statistic does not relate to the growing number of working poor, those families with working parent(s), which do not receive government assistance, and manage to scrape by and earn more than the official poverty line, yet live a most difficult meager existence but are not entitled to aid. The current global fiscal crisis seems to rapidly adding more numbers to this category as many parents have had working hours reduced or one parent losing his/her job due to the situation.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)