'30% of kids are below poverty line'
BY JPOST.COM STAFF
14/02/2010
Ahead of Family Day, Nat'l Insurance Institute divulges grim statistics.

A third of the children in Israel live below the poverty line, according to data published by the National Insurance Institute on Sunday ahead of Family Day, which falls on Monday.

According to the data, a quarter of families with children – 238,200 homes out of slightly over two million – live in poverty.

The institute also divulged data about the amount of children in every family. Reportedly, 32 percent of families in Israel have only one child. A slightly smaller percentage – 31 – were found to have two children. 20 percent of families have three children and only eight percent have five or six children.

Ninety-seven percent of single parents are women, according to the institute, and 30 percent out of 130,000 families with one parent are below the poverty line.

In its statement, the institute announced that steps would be taken to introduce automatic payment of birth allowances to women, who would no longer be required to fill out forms for that purpose.

The statement also included birth rate statistics: 160,000 babies were born in Israel in 2009, among them 3,500 sets of twins and 100 sets of triplets, quadruplets and more.

I have a novel idea why don't we cut the number of Minister and Knesset members by 50% and pass the savings on to those living below the poverty level.