“This is a society that chooses poverty consciously and with awareness, in order to live according to religious morals. It has its own order of priorities and that is reflected in the fact that the consequences of poverty are different”

Yes, chareidim are poor, but for the most part they are happy.

That is one result of a new survey of the chareidi sector, conducted by the Jerusalem-based Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, which found that one in two chareidim in Israel lives below the poverty line but only 7.7 percent of respondents reported feeling poor. This response rate was similar to the results in the non-chareidi population.

“Poverty in chareidi society is unequivocally different to poverty in other sectors,” says Nitsa (Kaliner) Kasir, deputy chairman of the Haredi Institute, and a co-author of the studyalong with Dr. Dmitri Romanov. “This is a society that chooses poverty consciously and with awareness, in order to live according to religious morals. It has its own order of priorities and that is reflected in the fact that the consequences of poverty are different.”

It would be reasonable to suggest that most chareidim don’t feel poor because most people around them are also poor, but that’s only part of the story. For one, Kasir and Romanov found that chareidim are better managers of their poverty than the general population. Communal organizations like gemachim, which provide a wide range of items, along with a network of discounted sales, make it possible for a chareidi family to do more with less. Indeed, the survey found that 71 percent of respondents were satisfied with their general economic status compared to 63 percent in the general Jewish population. That means that almost half of the poor chareidim are happy with their lot.

Poor but Healthy

The study, titled the Quality of Life Survey, looked at a number of other areas, including health, education, housing, employment, and charity. Researchers compiled their data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

Interestingly, while other studies have found that wealthy individuals live longer than poor people across the world, that’s not true in Israel. Not only is life expectancy higher among chareidim (Jerusalem and Bnei Brak are among the cities with the highest life expectancy in Israel), an array of objective and subjective indicators shows that the average chareidi enjoys good health despite low income levels.

For example, the body-mass index (BMI), which charts a person’s height versus his weight and determines a score (“normal” weight is 18 to 25), is an average of 26.1 among chareidi men, almost identical to the average among non-chareidi Jewish men. Among chareidi women, by contrast, the average BMI is within the normal range, at 24.7, and is lower than the average among non-chareidi Israelis. The number of those who suffer from excess weight in the chareidi sector is also very similar to the rate in the general Jewish population, slightly more than 50 percent among men and around 40 percent among women.

The most remarkable piece of data relates to smoking figures. The rate of chareidim who smoke is the lowest among all other population groups. Only 9 percent of chareidim smoke, compared to 23 percent in the general Jewish population and 25 percent among Arab-Israelis. Analysis of the smoking rate among all populations between 2003 and 2013 found that there was a decline in the smoking rate across the board, most likely as a result of mounting public awareness on smoking’s dangers. In the chareidi world, however, the decline was even more dramatic, the likely result of the force of halachic decrees, along with the view that smoking was a less desirable trait among the shidduch/dating population.