Social indicators and distress indices as decision making tools in Israel's urban renewal project.

A professional committee was asked by the relevant bodies in 1982 to recommend ten substandard neighborhoods in Israel for inclusion in the rehabilitation program. The committee found that the basic problem of Israel's substandard neighborhoods was cultural deprivation rather than poverty per se, such deprivation being primarily due to educational backwardness. The major problem faced by the committee was then how to compose an objective distress index that would enable it to grade all the neighborhoods wishing to be incorporated in the rehabilitation program, and to recommend to the decision makers adequate priorities.-from Authors