Structural changes in kibbutzim, socioeconomic inequality, disparity in social capital and effects on health and well being1

Introduction: What is a kibbutz? Description and its recent past No report of research on kibbutz population can be understood without at least a superficial knowledge of what a Kibbutz is. Yet, while an answer to this question was simpler in past years, it is much more complicated at present. In the past, all kibbutzim (plural in Hebrew of a Kibbutz) were very similar to each other in their governing principles of life, structure, organization, and the ideology held to by most members within each community and across communities. This has now changed in many kibbutzim. Currently one should refer to two different phenomena of kibbutz. Two different groups of communities exist who -while still bearing the same name ("kibbutz") -are becoming more and more dissimilar to each other. one group of kibbutzim which carries the characteristics of the traditional kibbutz and the other has transformed basic kibbutz principles and values: collective and altruistic values were replaced by individual and egocentric values in determining policies and directions for the future of the kibbutz society; democratic, equality, solidarity and commune values were replaced by ideologies of market principles and of neo-liberal ideology. The traditional kibbutz ideas still (2008) rule in about 30% of all kibbutzim but their numbers are falling every year. The study I describe here shows how structural changes based on the transformed ideologies in the non-traditional kibbutzim, as compared to traditional kibbutzim, brought about negative changes in levels of social capital and in expressions of health and well being of members.