The proportion of poor families in Israel dropped by 0.8 percent in 2013 from 2012, according to a report by the National Insurance Institute (Bituach Leumi). The report, which pointed to shrinking poverty in Israel, also found that the number of children under the poverty line fell by 2.9 percent. The report found that in 2013, 432,000 Israeli families (18.6 percent of all families) were poor, compared with 439,000 in 2012 (19.4 percent of all families). According to the report, 1,658,200 Israelis were living below the poverty line in 2013, 200,000 fewer than in 2012. Of those under the poverty line, 756,900 were children. A particularly gloomy figure arising from the report was a 0.2 percent rise in poverty for families with two income providers. In comparison to other developed countries, poverty figures in Israel are still among the highest. In 2013, a single person earning less than 2,989 shekels ($760) per month was considered poor, as was a couple earning less than 4,783 shekels ($1,200) monthly. A family of five needed an income of 9,000 shekels ($2,300) per month in 2013 to be above the poverty line. The report also shows that despite the decision to cut children's welfare payments at the beginning of 2013, the quality of life in terms of available median income per individual actually rose, in real terms, by 4.4 percent, as did the poverty threshold as a result. The report's authors said that cutting children's welfare, combined with a higher employment rate and increased income among those earning low salaries, helped stem the expected rise in the number of people living below the poverty line. According to the report, the state's intervention by means of pensions and direct taxation saved 34 percent of families and around 13 percent of the country's children from falling below the poverty line. Meanwhile, poverty figures among the elderly fell from 22.7 percent in 2012 to 22.1 percent in 2013. Another improvement was seen among Arab families, with a drop in the poverty rate from 54.3 percent in 2012 to 47.4 percent in 2013. The encouraging figures presented in the report, however, were not enough to prevent criticism. NII Director-General Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef said that pensions can help extract people from poverty and also help to preserve high incomes. "It's important to remember that the ideal is not to be just a millimeter above the poverty line," he said. "There is still a long way to go to come close to the average poverty and inequality rates among OECD countries." The Israel National Council for the Child issued a statement, saying: "We need to be thankful for every child who rises above the poverty line, certainly when the numbers are in the thousands, even if they are too few and leave too many more behind. With that, almost every third child in Israel lives under the poverty line, and many of the children above them are too close." Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, said: "There is a severe social crisis in Israel that we must change. Throughout the years, Israeli governments put the weak at the bottom of the priority list, when they are the first to be hurt by [budget] cuts and are increasingly abandoned to the mercy of the free market without a proper social security net." According to MK Orly Levi-Abekasis (Yisrael Beytenu), "The report's findings point to certain improvements regarding the scope of poverty, and any improvement, even the slightest, should be welcomed. With that, we cannot ignore the fact that for more than a decade already almost one-third of the children, one-fifth of the families and about one quarter of the population live in poverty."
