Brooklyn Orthodox Neighborhood Has Highest Birth Rate in New York City
A heavily haredi Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn boasts New York City’s highest birth rate.
Boro Park, which is known for its sizable Orthodox Jewish population, has 27.9 births per 1,000 residents, making it “easily the city’s baby capital,” according to the New York Post.
Citing 2013 data, the Post reported that the city’s overall birth rate is at its lowest level since 1936 and has declined steadily in the past 10 years.
Half the new births in the city are to foreign-born women, with Asians boasting the highest rate among the city’s immigrants. Forty percent of births were out of wedlock, and nearly 60 percent were to women receiving Medicaid or other government-subsidized health insurance. African-Americans had the lowest birth rate citywide.
In Boro Park, which has sizable Asian and Latino populations in addition to haredi Orthodox, 40.4 percent of residents are foreign-born, according to City-Data.com.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO