Israel’s Jewish and Arab Birthrate About Even

Image by Getty Image
The birthrate of Jewish and Arab women in Israel is about even, according to new Israeli figures.
Jewish women in Israel had a birthrate of 3.11 children and Arab women had a birthrate of 3.17 children at the end of 2014, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. The figures were released Tuesday, ahead of World Children’s Day.
Slightly more than a decade ago, there was nearly a two-child gap in the birthrate, with Arab women at 4.3 compared to Jewish women at 2.6.
At a total of 2.74 million, children make up 33 percent of Israel’s population, according to the CBS. Some 1.945 million, or 71 percent, are Jewish and 713,000, or 26 percent, are Arab.
The statistics also found that about 92 percent of all Israeli children live with two parents, and that most children in one-parent homes, or 93 percent, live with their mother.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
