Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israel’s Population 10 Times Larger Than at State’s Founding

The population of Israel has grown more than tenfold since the state’s establishment in 1948.

In statistics released to coincide with Israeli Independence Day, which begins Wednesday night, the Central Bureau of Statistics that Israel has 8.52 million residents, compared to 806,000 in 1948.

In the past year alone, Israel’s population has grown by 182,000, or 2.2 percent, thanks to a birthrate that exceeded the death rate, as well as the arrival of 36,000 immigrants.

Jews now make up 74.8 percent of the population and Arabs 20.8 percent. The remaining 4.4 percent are non-Arab Christians and people with no reported religion, mostly from the former Soviet Union.

According to the report, Israel is now home to 43 percent of the world’s Jews, compared to just 6 percent in 1948.

While the report includes Jewish settlers in the West Bank, who are Israeli citizens, it does not appear to count Palestinians living there. It is not clear whether the report counts Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem, who have been eligible for Israeli citizenship since Israel annexed the city in 1967.

Also not clear is whether the 1948 statistic encompasses the entire area that had fallen under the British Mandate or just the area then under Israeli control. The “Green Line” borders of Israel were not finalized until 1949, after its War of Independence.

The population is estimated to reach 11.3 million by 2035.

Three quarters of the population was born in Israel, compared to 35 percent in 1948.

Other findings include that household appliances ownership has grown dramatically since the 1950s. As of 2014, 96 percent of Israelis had a washing machine (compared to 12 percent in 1956), 99.9 percent (compared to 37 percent in 1956) owned a refrigerator and 87 percent (compared to 10 percent in 1957) had air conditioning. While only 13 percent of Israelis had a telephone in 1963, today 96 percent have at least one cellphone.

Also, voting participation rates have declined since 1949, when 86.9 percent of the population voted, compared to 72.4 percent who voted in the most recent elections.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.