Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics expects a decline in population growth

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics expects Israel’s population to reach 11.4 million in 2035, of which 73 per cent will be Jews. That is slightly lower than the current percentage.

The Bureau released the data on Tuesday in a report that included Israel’s expected population size, the percentage of Jews, quality of life, the life expectancy of women and other benchmarks that characterise communities. The report pointed out that Israeli society will grow old and look older, as the number of elderly people will rise dramatically; the average age of women is expected to reach nearly 90 years.

Population growth is expected to slow, with the annual growth rate in 2035 being predicted at 1.4 per cent, a drop on the 1.9 per cent of the years 2006-2010.

With regard to religious and ethnic distribution, the Bureau predicts that the number of Jews in Israel in 22 years time will be 8.3 million. That is up from 5.8 million in 2010. There is, therefore, a predicted drop in the number of Jews in Israel as a percentage of the total population between now and 2035, when the prediction is that there will also be 2.6 million Arabs in the country; that’s 23 per cent of the population. In 2010, there were 1.6 million Arabs making up 20.5 per cent of the total number of people in Israel. The annual growth rate of the Arab population is expected to drop, from 2.7 per cent to 1.8 per cent in 2035.

Only 6 per cent of the population increase across all groups will be due to immigration, predicts the Bureau, a dramatic drop on the 11 per cent of 2010.