Israeli Jews Continue to Defy Birthrate Trends. NewsWire

NewsWire: 9/1/22

• In Israel, the long-established gap between the birthrates of Muslims and Jews has closed. As birthrates among Israeli Muslims have fallen sharply over time, those among Israeli Jews--particularly the most orthodox--have remained steady or even climbed. (The Economist)
  
• NH: Among demographers, Israel’s birthrate has always been a subject of intense interest. As we’ve previously noted (see “Israel’s High Fertility Breaks All the Rules”), Israel breaks all the ordinary demographic rules. With its high-income, highly educated, and highly urban population, Israel ought to have one of the lowest TFRs in the world. But in fact it has by far the highest fertility rate among OECD countries (2.9). It jumps entirely off the regression trend line.
• All of this remains true today. But the drivers of its high fertility have been changing over time.
• In 1960, Israeli Muslims had an average TFR of 9.3, the highest birthrate of any group in Israel by a vast margin. But over the next few decades, this rate began falling, slipping to 4.7 by the late 1980s before hitting 3.0 today.
• For much of this period, Israeli Jews experienced a similarly declining TFR trend. Their birthrate declined from 3.4 in 1969 to 2.6 in 1990. But as the years went by, the birthrate among Jews began rising again. This was largely due to the growing number of ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) Jews, whose fertility rate going into the early 2000s (at 7.4) was more than double the national average. More recently, Haredi birthrates have stabilized at around 6.6. Meanwhile, the birthrates of moderately religious and secular Jews--who make up most of the population--have remained stable or risen slightly.

• The result? The once-large gap between the birthrates of Israeli Jews and Muslims has closed. The TFR among Muslims is 3.0, and among Jews, it’s 3.1.
• While the Haredi constitute only 13% of Israel’s population, their extremely high birthrate illustrates the outsized impact of religiosity on population trends. The share of Haredi Jews has roughly doubled every generation, and their children make up 19% of Israeli kids under age 14 and 24% of those under age 4. If current fertility trends continue, experts predict that half of Israeli children will be Haredi by 2065.
• And the impact will be felt far beyond Israel. High-fertility subgroups tend not only to increase the population of the country where they live, but over time, end up replacing lower-fertility groups. (See "U.S. Jews Under 30 More Orthodox Than Their Parents.") To be sure, not all of the Haredi will remain religious, but as long as their birthrates remain significantly higher overall, their numbers will keep rising faster.