Study: Israel’s middle class shrinking

Politicians looking for electoral support from Israel’s middle class in last Tuesday’s elections may have been barking up the wrong tree, Niv Elis wrote in an article in the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post

He cited a study released Monday by the Adva Center for equality and social justice in Israel as finding that the middle class in Israel is shrinking, falling from 30.8 percent of households in 1992 to 27.8% in 2010.

In comparison, in the last decade the proportion of the middle class in Denmark was over double (62.8%) that in Israel.

Nordic countries were not the only ones to best Israel in middle-class robustness, however. France, Germany, Canada, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom came out ahead, as did debt-ridden and economically shaky countries including Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland. Mexico and Brazil came in just behind.