Survey reveals: This is the weakest neighborhood in Israel and the poorest ultra-Orthodox city

July 31, 2024   

The Central Bureau of Statistics' ranking shows that, according to data from 2021, a series of ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Bnei Brak, Jerusalem, and Beit Shemesh are the weakest and poorest neighborhoods in the country. The socio-economic index of localities in Israel - Published in 'Globes'' - is obtained by weighting 14 variables, including average salary, median age, number of families with four or more people, education and academic degrees, employment among women, receipt of benefits and income supplements, presence of vehicles and frequency of trips abroad. Tel Aviv, on average, is included in socio-economic cluster 8, but it has 80 neighborhoods, which are included in socio-economic scale 9, including most of districts 3 and 4, for example. On the other hand, the New Central Bus Station area is included in socio-economic cluster 2, and is the lowest in the city. Jerusalem has been on a downward trend on the socio-economic scale in recent decades, and although it remains in the same place in the current survey findings as in 2019 - the situation is not respectable: the city is ranked in cluster 2, with no less than 29 neighborhoods in it included in the lowest cluster - 1, and a large part of them are Haredi neighborhoods that are in the last places in the ranking. Israel's socio-economic. Only 2 neighborhoods - Niyot and Givat Beit Hakerem are included in socio-economic cluster 9. The third city, Haifa, has been consistently ranked 7 in recent years on the socio-economic scale, but the number of its neighborhoods included in cluster 10 shrank this year from eight to one, namely Danya, a neighborhood that consistently ranks high in the neighborhood rankings. 16 neighborhoods in the city are included in cluster 9, while one neighborhood is in cluster 1 - Hadar Mizrahi, a neighborhood that is also characterized by an ultra-Orthodox population. And who are the weakest neighborhoods in Israel? According to 'Globes, it is impossible to ignore their common denominator: most of them are ultra-Orthodox. Ramat Elhanan in Bnei Brak is the neighborhood that is located in the lowest place out of the 1,641 examined; ahead of it in the ranking are Mea Shearim, Beit Israel West and Geula South in Jerusalem, and above them is a small neighborhood near the industrial zone of Afula, Psagot Heshemesh and Kiryat Rema in Beit Shemesh. 'Globes' notes that the Haredi public tends to rebel against this ranking, as it concerns a population that, for ideological reasons, chooses not to acquire an academic education, to make a living in a pinch and to build large families - which in the ranking system works against them, and does not necessarily reflect their standard of living. However, the bottom line is still that this is a population that lives in the weakest socio-economic conditions in the country. And what is happening in the localities? Eight localities are included in Cluster 1 in the current survey: Neve Midbar, Arara in the Negev, Tel Sheva El Kasum, Kasifa, Segev Shalom, Modi'in Ilit Haredi and Hura. Here, in addition to Modi'in Ilit, Arab localities also stand out. Three localities rose from Cluster 1 to 2 in the last survey: Lakiya, Beitar Ilit Haredi and Rahat. The Shoresh Institute for Economic and Social Research, headed by Prof. Dan Ben-David, warns that the CBS data confirm the results of the study conducted by the institute, which found that the municipalities that experienced the sharpest socio-economic decline experienced a particularly rapid growth in the Haredi population, in parallel with the collapse of the secular population. The study conducted by the institute looked at data from 1995 to 2019 and found that Jerusalem fell in three socio-economic clusters, from cluster 5 to cluster 2, in just two and a half decades. Three additional cities also suffered a fall in three clusters - the largest fall in the years 1995-2019: Beit Shemesh, which was ranked in cluster 5 in 1995 and fell by 2019 to cluster 2, similar to Jerusalem; Arad, which fell from cluster 6 to cluster 3; and Givat Ze'ev, which was ranked in cluster 8 in 1995, and fell Cluster 5 over the years.