Family Futures

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onfronting

amily

overty

of Israeli women, which are near the OECD average,

are

largely unaffected during motherhood. While 77 per cent

of Israeli women aged 25-44 without children are in the

labour force, the figure only drops to 72 per cent for women

with a child under the age of four at home.

Among women

with an academic degree, there is essentially no difference

between those with and without young children.

Perhaps Israel’s combination of a family-oriented society

and an integrative approach to women in the workforce is

best exemplified by its long history of supportive policies that

encourage employment by mothers. These include parental

leave arrangements (such as weeks of maternity leave, wage

replacement rate during leave and legislated job protection)

and particularly robust childcare policies (such as public

childcare, childcare subsidy and after school programmes).

Job and benefits protection during maternity leave and part-

time work options are also highly characteristic of the Israeli

labour market. Following a nationwide social protest move-

ment in 2011, Israel has begun to implement an existing

law providing for universal preschool starting from the age

of three, which will increase the share of children in public

preschools in 2013 by an estimated 10-15 per cent.

Specific

work-family policies and cultural attitudes have been credited

with nearly eliminating the ‘motherhood penalty’ for working

women in Israel, similar to Scandinavian countries and well

ahead of countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Austria,

the United Kingdom and the United States.

Even within an environment supportive of both family and

working mothers, Israeli households face some significant

challenges. A 2012 study shows that the well-being of young,

working families has been negatively affected by decreased

income relative to other Israelis in recent years as well as

growing housing costs. These frustrations, alongside dissat-

isfaction in taxation, transportation and education policies,

culminated in the major 2011 social protest movement

and the subsequent efforts of the government-appointed

Trachtenberg Commission to recommend policy changes.

While there is serious concern regarding the well-being

of middle-class families, Israelis at the bottom end of the

income distribution are facing an even more severe situa-

tion. One in five Israeli families live below the poverty line,

which, together with the United States, is the highest rate

among the 22 developed OECD countries in the sample.

Because poverty in Israel is concentrated in larger families,

the young are particularly hurt. One in three Israeli children

lives below the poverty line, which is a rate unparalleled in

the developed world.

After an expansive period of welfare programmes in the

1990s helped taper growth in poverty rates, the last 10

years have been characterized by conservative fiscal poli-

cies which reduced such programmes.

Child allowances

and welfare-to-work programmes have been cut, while

eligibility for income support tightened and its payments

decreased. The problem is particularly pronounced among

Haredi and Arab households, 57 per cent and 50 per cent

of which live below the poverty line, respectively. Even

when these populations are excluded from the analysis,

Israel still has some of the highest rates of poverty in the

developed world.

In contrast to other countries, where poverty tends to

afflict the elderly and single-parent families, it is young,

large families which tend to be poor in Israel. The chal-

lenge for Israel is that moving entire large families out of

poverty requires more resources and innovative policies.

Further, there are unique structural barriers underlying

poverty in Israel. Central Bureau of Statistics data for 2009

showed that Haredi women in Israel average 6.5 children,

while recent generations of Haredi men – defying trends

across other developed societies – are progressively lower

educated and less likely to participate in the labour market.

Instead, Haredi boys receive only a partial education in

core subjects and even this ends completely after the eighth

grade. Religious and communal pressures lead most Haredi

men today to engage in part-time or full-time religious

studies throughout much of their life. In sharp contrast to

the growing rates of higher education in Israel, the share

of ultra-Orthodox men aged 35-54 with no more than a

primary school education has increased by more than 50

per cent in the past decade alone.

Less than half of ultra-

Orthodox men in the prime working age group of 25-44

are employed, compared to 80 per cent and higher among

all other Israeli men.

Poverty among Arab-Israeli families is caused by a very

different set of underlying factors. First, while growing stead-

ily, employment among Arab-Israeli women remains quite

low, at 30 per cent versus 81 per cent for non-Haredi Jewish

women. These numbers demonstrate the importance of educa-

Employment rates of working-age men by sector

and age, 2008

Source: Eitan Regev, Taub Center

Data: Central Bureau of Statistics, Population Census Data

81.4

26.8

84.9

41.1

81.0

48.3

100

25-34

*Haredi/m are ultra-Orthodox Jews

35-44

45-54

Haredim*

Non-Haredi* Israelis

Per cent