The social gaps in Israel are growing: Society in Israel is characterized by “edges that are taking deep roots and moving away from each other,” according to the annual report of the Adva Center, an institute for Israeli social-democratic social-democratic approach, published today (Sunday).
One of the main conclusions of the report talks about exacerbating the social disparities in the two years of the corona so that the rich got richer, at the same time as the poor became poorer. “The corona plague has caused a slowdown in economic activity, the closure of businesses and widespread unemployment. At the same time, the financial assets held by the public have actually increased,” the report’s authors explain.
The report reviews, among other things, the effects of the corona plague on inequality, and finds that while the rich have become rich, the majority do not. Precisely in 2020, the first year of an epidemic that shook the economy and led to an unprecedented unemployment crisis, the financial assets held by the public continued to grow – by 8.5%, reaching NIS 4.406 billion.
The researchers explain the distortion: “The economic crisis caused individuals and institutions to invest their money in the capital market and not in actual economic activity. In practice, most of the public’s financial assets are held by the upper deciles, especially the upper deciles. “Savings account, etc., but the share of capitalists and senior members of the business economy in the total financial assets is particularly large.”
According to the authors of the report, the enrichment of Israel’s rich people could have seeped into the entire population if the taxes paid by the rich increased at a rate similar to that of their wealth, thus allowing the state to invest in the services it provides to all citizens. However, while the financial assets held by the public increased by 31.6% between 2015 and 2020, the state’s tax revenue increased by only 14.5%.
“Of course the rich pay a large part of the taxes, especially income tax, but the level of taxation in Israel as a percentage of GDP is among the lowest among Western and Central European countries that are members of the OECD, while in Israel there is no wealth or inheritance tax,” the report notes.
The report also points to significant gaps in the housing market in the country. “The general average hides large gaps between households on the basis of age, origin and income level. Beyond age and marital status, the housing issue also reflects gender, national, class and sectarian differences.”
According to the report, among the Arab citizens of Israel, whose localities suffer from a lack of land for construction, ownership is the main housing arrangement: the ownership rate is very high – 81%. Among Jews, the origin group with the highest rate of homeless households is that of immigrants from the former Soviet Union: 43% of them do not own a home. Among Ethiopians, the corresponding rate is 40.5% and among the two largest origin groups, Ashkenazis and Mizrahis, the proportion of households without an owner-occupied dwelling was relatively similar: 25.4% and 23.3%, respectively.
It was also stated that according to the report, the ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin Jews in the Negev are the two population groups most prone to dropout. However, once they drop out, there is a big gap between them when it comes to state responses: in the year before Corona (2019-2018) only 27% of the students who dropped out in the Bedouin localities had any educational response compared to 65% of the students who were under ultra-Orthodox supervision. In 2020-2019 the situation of the Bedouin dropouts worsened further and only 15% of them found an alternative framework. The number of students dropping out of the upper division of Hebrew and Arab education, for which no alternative framework was found, was 7,243 in 2019-2018 and 6,737 in 2020-2019. The dropout condemns them to a life of extremely limited possibilities.
Regarding the two years of the plague, the authors of the report warn of a disturbing trend. “The ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and the Arab communities were classified for weeks and months as red communities, those in which no studies took place at all for long periods of time. And even the Central Bureau of Statistics has warned that the optimistic figure indicating a continued decline in dropouts does not necessarily indicate what is happening in reality. “Before the plague, there were fewer injuries.”
The report was written by Shlomo Svirsky, Etty Conor-Atias, Barbara Svirsky, Shani Bar-On Maman, Yaron Hoffman-Dishon and Noga Dagan-Buzaglo.
Shlomo Svirsky, Academic Director at the Adva Center and one of the report’s authors: “The social picture that emerges from this document is a picture of edges moving away from each other: Of life finds itself in the path of closed gates. “
Svirevsky added that “the state’s capabilities to deal with socio-economic inequality are diminishing, due to insufficient resources. If we want more universal and generous services, we must raise their level of funding, that is, the level of state revenue from taxation, especially from high and high income earners. Capital and a lot of property. ” Finished.