Israel/Palestine

High drop-out rate predisposes to low-paying jobs.

Moreover, of the 75% in poverty, 84% are under 18. Now, if the kids are in poverty their parents certainly are. So if I have 1000 Palestinians chosen randomly I'm going to find 160 adults and 840 kids? That argues for either a skewed fertility rate for poor Arabs in Jerusalem or something else is going on.

Still, it's a truism that the easiest way for a low-income worker to fall under the poverty line is to have another child. In most countries these days, it's low income families that go on to have the largest number of children, on average, so that heart-wrenching disproportionately large number of kids in poverty is not going away. It's not a free-standing fact caused simply by family-external factors and while the inconvenience of finding child-care may lower incomes, that's a knock-on effect of having more kids. Whatever a 16-year-old has internalized is largely predictive of both family size and income, before either is actually realized. (Apparently Jewish fertility is a tad higher in Jerusalem than Arab, but I'm not sure that this violates that general rule. A lot of ultra-orthodox are not what one would call wealthy.)