Factors in status

Among respondents, the largest percentage (44% in Jerusalem) indicated that a person’s financial situation is the central factor which influences his or her status.

By OMER YANIV
Factors in status (photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH)
Factors in status
(photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH)
Which factors make the greatest impact on a person’s status in society? Is one’s fate determined by the environment within which one is born and raised, or is it the individual in his or her own right who determines that status? In an attempt to discover the answer to this weighty question in the context of Israeli society, respondents to a 2018 survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics were asked to pick the three factors which in their opinion have the most impact on the status of a person in society.
Among respondents, the largest percentage (44% in Jerusalem) indicated that a person’s financial situation is the central factor which influences his or her status. This was followed by education (42%), skills and ability (42%), personal connections (40%), and profession (23%). These same categories were also chosen as having the greatest impact by the respondents in the overall population in Israel and by the respondents in two other large cities, with one’s financial situation being rated as the most influential factor among respondents from the general population (51%), those from Tel Aviv (59%), and those from Haifa (53%).
Among the additional categories appearing in the survey, the one referred to as “providence” was prominent among respondents in Jerusalem, 21% of whom chose it as a decisive factor in determining a person’s status. This factor was chosen by 34% of Jewish respondents, and no fewer than 68% of respondents from among Jerusalem’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) residents (and 64% of haredi respondents from across Israel). For comparison’s sake, in Tel Aviv and Haifa, only 5% and 6% of respondents, respectively, indicated that providence has significance in the determination of an individual’s status in society.
Respondents were also asked about the impact of nationality on a person’s status. Among Jerusalem respondents, 16% chose nationality as a central factor influencing an individual’s status in society (as compared to 12% of respondents in Israel as a whole), while among the Jewish resident of the city, only 12% chose it as a decisive factor (as compared to 10% of Jews in Israel). Among Jerusalemite Arabs, 21% replied that nationality is a decisive factor (as compared to 18% of the Arab resident respondents in Israel as a whole). 
Translated by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann.