A new report warns of a sharp rise in child poverty in Britain’s haredi Orthodox Jewish community.
The report says the rise in child poverty is due to the haredi community’s large families, lack of secular education and work skills, and cuts in both charitable giving and state social benefits.
“Alarm bells [in the haredi community] should be ringing loudly,” according to the report, which was issued last week by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London.
“There is already clear evidence of poverty and deprivation in this community,” the report said. “The potentially toxic mix of a paucity of professional skills, a growing number of mouths to feed, a reduction in government support and a likely diminution of charitable donations all point towards the probability of a noteworthy increase in child poverty and deprivation in the coming years.”
The report added that the haredi community “has a remarkable infrastructure of voluntary and professional social care,” but wondered if “it will be able to provide sufficient support to meet a growing demand given the wider contemporary economic and political context.”
A 2001 United Kingdom census indicated more than 52,000 Jewish children live in Britain. Overall, it showed that nearly 8 percent lived in overcrowded conditions and 8.5 percent lived in households where no adult was employed; more than one-fifth of these children lived in Hackney. — jta