Israel's income supplements lowest in West

The guaranteed income supplements allocated to poor families in Israel is the lowest among the Western welfare states that pay similar allowances, according to researchers from the Social Work School in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The researchers conducted an international comparison of allowances for basic existence.

Before the drastic slash in guaranteed income allowances in June 2003, Israel was placed in the middle of the list, with the allowance for a single mother with two children higher than even Sweden's.

But after the cut, which reduced the allowances of almost 100,000 families by an average 30 percent, Israel plunged to the penultimate place in the list, above Spain but below the United States, which is not considered a welfare state at all.

In a comparison of the guaranteed income's proportion to the gross domestic product, Israel was close to the bottom of the list even before the cut, with an allowance expenditure of 0.7 percent of the GDP.

In the United State the allowance constituted 0.75 percent, in Sweden 1.1 percent, in Germany 1.4 percent and in Canada 1.6 percent.

However, in Ireland, Italy and Spain the guaranteed income expenditure was even lower than Israel's in percentage, but after the cut Israel's may be lower.

"The argument that the allowances in Israel are very generous and take up a large chunk of the budget compared to other states is not substantiated by the data," the researchers wrote in their report.