Begging seems to be a respectable profession in Israel. Last night four beggars showed up at the door in the evening. My mother asks them for a letter from the town rabbi certifying that their need is genuine - how that is verified, I have no idea - and then she (and everyone else in the neighborhood, presumably) gives the beggar (called shnurer from the Yiddish) a few shekels. A few hours of such labor each night comes out to quite a lucrative income.
On Ben Yehuda Street the other day, sitting with my laptop at an outdoor table, a woman came up to me and started whining about her husband with cancer, her kids with something else...I asked why she came to me - because of the laptop? - and she got angry.
My friend has a different tactic for beggars complaining about their kids - he asks them why they had to have so many kids.
Sitting in the Coffee Bean right now, a kid, maybe 14, walked in a few minutes ago and started waving his hand up and down, cupped for money, in front of an employee that was sitting down to eat. He brushed the kid off, so the kid went to a patron at the next table - at which point the employee took the kid by the back of the shirt and guided him firmly out the door. But the fact that a kid is able, seemingly with no shame, to walk around the center of town and beg for money, says a lot, I think.
Unemployment is at a record low in Israel these days, so there's no reason why these people (the adults at least) can't get jobs. It's more about social norms than economic hardship, apparently.