The National Insurance Institute (NII) (Bituach Leumi) has released its annual report on poverty that once is based on a statistical method that guarantees that the “poor will always be with us.”

By partly basing the “poverty line” on the average family income, the poor would always remain that way even if the government were to give every family in the country an addition sum of money, an action that would raise both the average income and the poverty line.

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For the record, the NII stated that less young people but more of the elderly are living below the poverty line.

It concluded that 1.7 million people, more than 20 percent of the population, are poor. Its explanation for the rise in the number of the elderly poor illustrates another statistical fallacy. It explained that the number rose because their pensions are not included in the income of the elderly.

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