Helping the Poor Begins with Measuring Poverty Accurately, the paper recommends transferring the responsibility for national poverty measurement from the Institute for National Insurance (Bituach Leumi) to a more objective institution, such as the Central Bureau of Statistics or the Bank of Israel.

Annual Report on Poverty reviews the National Insurance Insti­tute (NII) Report on poverty. This year, JIMS’ report shows that the NII poverty report is based on surveys of reported income in a given year not taking into account past or future earnings. According to this measure, 41% of the classified poor spend more than the poverty line.

JIMS' first annual report on poverty shows that Israel has made great strides in reducing poverty over the past ten years. Some of the findings of the report are: the number of people living under an absolute poverty line has fallen by 18.8% in 4 years In 2004, 18.1% were under the poverty line while in 2008, only 14.7% were.