Concern in Israel over the decline in population growth and fertility rate

An Israeli report revealed on Wednesday that there has been an unprecedented decline in the rate of population growth inside Israel, as a result of the continued negative immigration and declining fertility rates, in a demographic development recorded for the first time since the establishment in 1948.

According to the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, the State of the State 2025 report issued by the Taub Center for Policy Research showed that the population growth rate in Israel will decline to only 0.9% during 2025.

The commission said this was a precedent since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, as it reflected a disturbing demographic picture.

The report indicated that Israel suffered a net loss of about 37,000 people, as a result of the departure of more people than those who came and returned, for the second year in a row.

He pointed to the escalation of what the report described as reverse migration of former immigrants, along with an increase in the departure of Israelis themselves.

The report showed that this decline coincides with a clear decline in the fertility rate.

Although the annual number of births has seemed relatively stable over the last decade.

“Fertility among secular and traditional Jewish women is expected to decline to about 1.7 children per woman by the end of the next decade, and among religious women to about 2.3, while in the ultra-Orthodox community it will decline to about 4.3 children per woman,” the report said.

“Similar trends are being recorded in Arab society, where these shifts are likely to lead to a real decline in the total number of births in the coming years,” the report added.

According to the head of demography department at the Taub Center, Alex Weinreb, as saying that Israel stands on the cusp of a new era, having become the peak of the natural increase of the past.

“Migration policies will become a critical element in boosting future demographic growth, in light of the profound demographic shifts monitored in the report,” he said.

These shifts are particularly important in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where demography has been one of the pillars of Israeli politics, whether by encouraging Jewish immigration or imposing policies of displacement and restriction on Palestinians, in an attempt to maintain a Jewish majority.

In October, Maariv newspaper quoted a special report by the Knesset as saying that most of the departures were educated young people between the ages of 20 and 39, and some of them immigrants to Israel left shortly after their emigration.

It quoted data from the Central Bureau of Statistics that an average of about 36,000 people left Israel annually during the period 2009-2021.