Arab/Jewish Growth Gap Narrows

Hillel Fendel Arab/Jewish Growth Gap Narrows

Arab growth rate in Israel has dropped in the past decade by over 26%, while Jewish growth is closing the gap, having risen 22%.

The February report of the Central Bureau of Statistics shows that the Israel-Arab population growth rate stood at an annual 3.21% in 1998, and was down this past year to 2.36%. In contrast, the Jewish growth rate in Israel, though still lower than the Arab rate, is now 1.44%, up from 1.18% ten years ago.
. Thus, ten years ago, the Arab growth rate was 2.7 times higher than the Jewish rate, and is now only 1.6 times higher.

Demographer Yaakov Faitelson, an aide in the mid-90s to then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and a widely-published writer on Israeli demographic issues, says the above numbers are continuing the trend of the past 50 years. In 1964, for instance, the annual Arab growth rate in Israel was nearly 4.5%, and has dropped since then by nearly half.

Faitelson writes that live Jewish births have risen continually over the past 20 years, reaching a high in 2008 of 112,763 – a jump of more than 55% during that period. This figure does not include the nearly 4,700 live births among the non-Jewish Russian population. Of the one million people which the Jewish Agency brought to Israel from the Former Soviet Union, approximately one third of them are not Jewish.

Even if Jewish growth does not rise, and Arab growth continues dropping, Faitelson extrapolates, “the two growth rates will reach parity by 2025.” However, Faitelson is actually more optimistic than that, based on mortality rates. Among the Arabs, the rate currently stands at 0.27 (2.7 per thousand), while among Jews it is 0.67. As the Arab population grows older, their mortality rate will rise, Faitelson predicts.

The bottom line, however, he concludes, is that aliyah from abroad is necessary for Israel’s continued growth as a Jewish state.