35.8% OF ISRAELI CHILDREN LIVE IN POVERTY

Excerpt from a story in The Jerusalem Post (Sept 4, 2007): "Some 1.6 million Israelis lived under the poverty line in 2006, according to a report released on Tuesday by the National Insurance Institute. Social Welfare Minister Yitzhak Herzog presented the NII's poverty report together with the director general of the institute, Yigal Ben-Shalom. The report showed a slight decrease in overall poverty - the percentage of families living under the poverty line dropped from 20.6% in 2005 to 20% and the percentage of individuals living under the poverty line decreased from 24.7% to 24.5%. However, the percentage of children who suffered from poverty rose from 35.2% to 35.8%. According to the report, an estimated 404,000 families - 1.65 million people and 796,000 children - lived under the poverty line. There was a significant drop in poverty figures among the elderly - from 24.4% in 2005 to 21.5%. The fall was the result of an increase in pensions."