Almost 1.6 million people are impoverished, up 45% over the last five years, the National Fidelity national insurance company
Institute said on Monday, based on 2004-05 data.

Anyone earning less than 1,777 shekels ($3 a month, which was half the national average salary in 2004, was classed as impoverished by the report.

In recent years austerity measures have slashed welfare payments in a bid to national benefit life insurance company Israel’s sluggish economy.

Election issue

“This is not a tsunami or a cyclone that has taken us by surprise,” the director of the National Insurance Institute, Ygal Ben Shalom, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. “We rub shoulders with poverty every day.”

Mr Ben Shalom said 46,000 more people fell into poverty between mid 2004 and mid 2005, the period covered by the report.

“Thirty-four percent of children in Israel are considered paupers,” he added.

Poverty affects more Arab Israeli families than Jewish Israeli ones.

It is a major issue in washington national insurance company
campaigning for Israel’s general election on March 28.

The national state insurance company Labour party has vowed to address the economic and social problems of the national benefit life insurance company of seven million people.

Recent opinion polls put Labour in second place behind the newly formed centrist Kadima party of ailing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.