State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman warned in a report published Sunday that Israel is not ready for its rapidly aging population and that the government has failed to build a coordinated response. He wrote that providing proper care for older Israelis is a moral and ethical duty, but said there is still a wide gap between official recognition of the problem and actual policy. He noted that seniors now make up 13% of the population and are expected to reach 15% by 2050, when Israel will have about 2 million elderly citizens, up from 1.3 million today.
The report also warns of a financial crisis in the National Insurance Institute. After the 2018 nursing-care reform, annual nursing expenditure jumped from 7 billion shekels to about 21 billion shekels in 2025, accelerating the fund’s depletion by 6.3 years. Englman said that by 2035 the institute will face a cash-flow deficit and, without additional funding, will not be able to pay all of its legal obligations. He criticized the socio-economic cabinet for not holding any recent discussion on the institute’s balance and recommended annual reviews, along with a return to in-person dependency assessments rather than document-only evaluations.
The comptroller said Israel is also falling short on employment among older adults. In the past year, labor-force participation among ages 67 to 74 was 22.3% for women and 35.4% for men, below government targets. He added that retirement ages have not been adjusted to longer life expectancy, with men still retiring at 67 and women gradually rising to 65, while life expectancy in 2024 stands at 81.4 for men and 85.5 for women. He also said Social Equality Minister May Golan has not appointed new members to the public advisory council for retirees since 2023.
On health care, the report says the system has fewer resources even as the elderly population grows. Between 2020 and 2023, geriatric hospital beds per 1,000 people age 75 and older fell by 16%, and geriatrics remains a shortage profession. Englman also found that about 54% of older adults did not complete any documented preventive action between 2019 and 2024, and that the Health Ministry has no tool to identify seniors at risk of decline.
The report further says the government has failed to assign any ministry responsibility for identifying and helping lonely older adults, despite a 2021 cabinet decision. No quantitative target was set to reduce loneliness, and neither the Social Equality Ministry nor the National Insurance Institute has set goals for detection or treatment. Englman called on the government to immediately prepare a funded, multi-year national plan with clear targets and a single coordinating authority.
