The National Council for the Child has issued its yearbook on children in Israel.  The number of families defined as “large”—those with four or more children—rose in 2007 to 17 percent of all families.  166,000 families had four or more children at the beginning of 2007.

Many large families continued to live under the poverty line in 2007, with families in the Bedouin sector most likely to be poor.  Almost 70 percent of Bedouin children lived under the poverty line in 2007.