Етностратификация и местоживеене в Израел: преосмисляне на фактите
Ethnic Stratification and Place of Residence in Israel: A Truism Revisited

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is to examine whether community type affects educational and occupational attainment in Israel. The 1950s was a decade of massive immigration absorption in Israel. The State built several dozen development towns to accommodate the influx of immigrants. Most new development towns were built in the periphery, away from the few urban centers and were settled by new immigrants, especially those who came from North Africa and the Middle East. To this very day, the vast majority of development town residents are descendants of these ethnic groups. Furthermore, the majority of Israelis of North African descent lives in development towns. Research has shown that the mean education, occupational status, and income in development towns are substantially lower than in other urban communities. These findings led some scholars to conclude that development towns have a depressing effect on the attainments of their residents, and since most of them are of Middle East and North African origins, that development towns are responsible for the inequalities between these groups and the more privileged Ashkenazim. We believe that this conclusion is premature. It is one thing to show that development towns are socially and economically depressed, and another to show that they have depressing effects on individuals. We test the hypothesis that development towns have depressing net effects on inhabitants’ educational and occupational attainments using a data file that merges individuals’ records from the 1983 and the 1995 Population Censuses. Data are available for 13,285 cases who were 27-34 years old in 1995. We find that residing in a development town has a negative effect on the attainment of matriculation diploma but no net effect on either higher education or on occupational attainment. Ethnic inequalities are only marginally due to their differential residential patterns and are largely attributable to the persistence of socioeconomic inequalities across generations, irrespective of community type.

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