The Taub Center, the Israeli social policy think tank, released its annual “Picture of the Nation” report today — and it is not a pretty picture for much of Israeli society.

After nearly three years of war, the Israeli economy, while resilient, has been struggling, with rising living costs, public debt and financial inequality. The government has also approved massive increases to defense spending — the highest level in 30 years — as social expenditures have largely stagnated, save for those directly related to the war, such as compensation for victims. The report also finds that the country is failing to meet its environmental goals, particularly as it relates to renewable energy sources. Positively, the think tank noted that while a doctor shortage persists, there has been a marked rise in the number of licensed physicians. 

One of the most worrying areas examined in the report deals with the country’s early childhood education, highlighting the severe effects that the war has had on Israeli children and their parents and caregivers. 

The Taub researchers find that this is particularly acute among the hundreds of thousands of Israeli children who have at least one parent who has performed reserve duty. 

The think tank’s surveys — which will come as almost no surprise to anyone who knows reservist families — found that children with at least one parent who performed reserve duty experienced emotional and behavioral issues, such as bedwetting and difficulty separating from their parents, while there were no such issues for children without a parent in the reserves. Children ages 4-6 with at least one parent in the reserves were also found to be less prepared to enter elementary school than their peers, having more difficulty with basic arithmetic and reading. 

These growing behavioral and environmental issues come as Israeli early childhood educators complain of overcrowded classes, insufficient training and high staff turnover, as well as low pay — all of which make it more difficult for them to provide the care that these increasingly stressed and struggling children need. The lack of investment in the country’s education and welfare system also makes it more difficult to support those educators, as well as the parents of the children.

“We need to invest billions of shekels in the development of young children,” Carmel Blank, a senior researcher at the Taub Center and at Netanya’s Ruppin Academic Center, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “We shouldn’t be afraid to say that this needs to be done. This should be a top priority. Because if we don’t do that, then we are raising another generation who will suffer from lower educational achievements and more emotional difficulties — and the mental health system in Israel is also in crisis, so there’s no one to treat them.”

And yet Blank stressed that while the situation is dire, with potentially long-lasting effects on Israel’s society and economy, it is also readily remedied for the same reason that it is so dangerous. “The situation is problematic, but it is not irreversible,” she said.  

“What happens to you in early childhood can have long-term effects for the rest of your life. For example, we see that if you lived in poverty until the age of 2, when you are in fifth grade, your grades would be significantly lower than those of other people, even if the economic situation of the family has improved after you were 2 years old,” she said. “But on the other hand, because they are more sensitive, it is also much easier for them to adapt when things improve. If a child with problems gets treatment or moves into a better daycare or the daycare staff get training, the studies show that the results can be much faster [than older children] and they can be much more effective in the long term.” 

Many of the interventions that have been tried so far to address the country’s growing early childhood education crisis have focused on providing educators and parents better tools to help the children, training on how to explain the security situation to young children or to help them regulate their emotions. While Blank, a sociologist by training, said these programs are helpful, she believes that it is far more effective to provide educators and parents with better tools to help themselves.

She explained that young children may not fully understand terrorism and war, but they are eminently aware that the adults in their lives are stressed and anxious. This is particularly acute when one parent is not at home because they are in the reserves, she said.

“If you want to treat it, then you need to focus on giving some emotional support to the parents, and I don’t see a lot of programs that focus on giving the parents of young children enough support,” she said.

The same is true for those young children’s caregivers as well. 

“When there’s a siren, if [the early childhood educator] is anxious and stressed, then the children will react to that stress even more than they react to the siren itself,” Blank said. “If you’re surrounded by stress and depression and anxiety at the daycare and you’re surrounded by it at home — these are the children who will suffer the most.”

In addition to reservist families, the effects of the war on young children are most severe among at-risk populations, particularly families that live below the poverty line and Arab Israelis, Blank said. 

She stressed that fundamentally addressing this issue — improving conditions in daycare centers for children and staff and providing additional support to parents and children who need it — is a governmental matter, not something that private philanthropy can do on its own. 

“If we don’t change the system and don’t invest billions of shekels within the system, we will not get the change that the system needs,” she said, noting that the State of Israel is willing to allocate significant funds for national security. “But this safety also means helping… children thrive and develop.”

Blank said that philanthropy can play a critical role in improving the country’s early childhood education both by funding advocacy work to get the government to make this a top priority and — in the meantime — supporting programs for the most at-risk children. 

“You need to give the parents tools for how to treat themselves, how to deal with their anxiety or depression or stress. This is an area where philanthropy can develop programs to target the most vulnerable populations, which are military families, families from low economic backgrounds, Arab families,” she said. “We see in research that children from a disadvantaged background are the children who get the most from a high-quality education system.”

Blank added that there is considerable “bang for your buck” in investing in early childhood, noting that some studies have shown that for every dollar invested in early childhood education, there is a $14 return. (Other studies have found a more modest fourfold return.)

“A gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure,” she said. “If you don’t invest those resources in early childhood, then you will have to treat them 10 or 20 years from now, when they will be teenagers or adults, and it will be much more expensive.”