Government Expenditure on Social Services – 2006

Under these new conditions, the problems of coping with Israel’s socio-economic issues became even more complicated and difficult.

The challenge of crafting the desired policy for the improvement of the welfare of weak population groups suffers, among other things, from difficulties in identifying, measuring and, particularly, in comparing cost-benefit ratios among different public social outlays. The goal of this survey is to contribute to the debate over the government’s socio-economic policy by improving its factual base. It describes long-term developments in a way that is consistent with previous surveys, gauges the main trends in government expenditure on social services, and attempts — to the extent possible — to assess the effectiveness of the expenditure.

This paper appears as a chapter in the Center’s annual publication, Israel’s Social Services 2006, Yaakov Kop (editor).