Startup Israel Suffering Most OECD Poverty as Poor Surge

By Jonathan Ferziger and David Wainer Apr 16, 2014 6:01 PM ET

Unable to pay their rent and turned down for public housing, Yafit Krisi and her husband gathered their four children and moved into a tent outside the city hall in Ashkelon, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast.

“Life is very hard in Israel and everything is very expensive,” the 33-year-old mother said as her children played in a nearby parking lot. “It weighs down on us.”

The family left the tent after a friend of Ashkelon’s mayor gave them enough to rent an apartment, Krisi said. She and her husband earn about 6,000 shekels ($1,721) a month from their jobs at a local beach resort, below the government poverty line.

The Krisis represent a growth sector in Israel’s economy: the working poor.

At 20.9 percent of its households, Israel’s poverty rate is the highest of any country in the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to OECD measures. Hit hard by the rising cost of living and falling wages, the number of employed and impoverished Israelis has risen steadily even as the economy outran the U.S. and Europe in recent years.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-16/startup-israel-suffering-most-oecd-poverty-as-poor-surge.html