Social Welfare Expenditure

This chapter surveys developments in government allocations for social welfare since the beginning of the millennium, with an emphasis on the past year. Over the last year, housing and cost of living difficulties stood at the center of public political discourse. The Committee for the War on Poverty, established at the initiative of the previous government, released its recommendations, and these included a significant expansion of the social welfare system. Despite this, the government budget did not include the planned increase in social security and social services expenditures. In fact, recent years have seen either a continued decline in actual spending, or a stable low level of expenditure for a substantial portion of the social welfare system. Striking examples of this are National Insurance Institute expenditures for child allowances and income support, as well as the expenditure of the Ministry of Construction and Housing. In contrast, there has been a continuous increase in expenditures on social security for the elderly and for those with disabilities, on spending by the Ministry of Social Services and Social Affairs on households under its care, and on assistance to Holocaust survivors.

This paper appears as a chapter in the Center’s annual publication, State of the Nation Report 2015, Dov Chernichovsky and Avi Weiss (editors).