Israel’s State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman dropped a report this week that reads like a to-do list the government wrote over a decade ago and never opened. The country’s population aged 65 and older sits at roughly 1.2 million as of 2024, with projections pushing that figure toward two million in the coming years. The infrastructure to support them, per Englman’s assessment, essentially doesn’t exist in any coordinated form.
Israel has officially recognized its aging population as a “strategic socioeconomic challenge” for more than ten years. And yet no single government body has been given the authority, budget, or responsibility to actually do something about it.
A fractured system with no quarterback
The report lays out a bureaucratic mess. Responsibility for elderly Israelis is currently carved up among the Health Ministry, the Welfare Ministry, the Social Equality Ministry, health funds, and the National Insurance Institute, known as the NII. Pensions, healthcare, long-term care, welfare services, and retirement support all fall under different roofs with no shared blueprint.
The NII, Israel’s equivalent of Social Security, is the entity that manages pensions and elderly benefits. It faces its own existential problem. According to the comptroller’s findings, the fund risks fiscal depletion as early as 2036. The culprit is a conservative investment strategy that leans heavily on low-yield government bonds.
