The fertility rate of ultra-Orthodox women has dropped significantly in recent years from 6.5 to 6 children, and is not stuck in place, as calculations by the Central Bureau of Statistics show.
This is according to a new study by Researcher Gabriel Gordon From the Israel Democracy Institute, first published by Shahar Ilan in Calcalist'.
Shahar Ilan points out that the advantage of Gordon's calculations is that they are based on data for the entire population in the Population Registry, while the CBS data is based on surveys.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
The projected fertility rate per woman is the key figure for measuring demographic trends. It is not an average number of children, but a calculation of the number of children a woman from a particular sector is expected to have over her lifetime.
It is accepted worldwide that as women go out to work more, the number of children decreases. But according to CBS data, it seemed that Haredi women were an exception.
Gordon's research reveals that with the dramatic increase in the employment rate of ultra-Orthodox women, which recently surpassed the 80%, there is also a clear decrease in their predicted fertility rate.
According to CBS calculations, the fertility rate of ultra-Orthodox women has been stagnant over the past decade - between 6.6 and 6.7. This compares to 2–2.2 children per woman among secular women, 3.1–3.2 among Jewish women, and 3.0–3.1 in the general Israeli figure.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in the period after the major cut in child benefits in 2003, the Haredi population recorded a decrease from 7.4 children in 2004 to 6.6 in 2008, then the decline stopped and since then the Haredi birth rate has been leveling off.
But according to Gordon, his calculations "found a decrease in the average number of births per Haredi woman from about 6.5 in 2008 to 6.15 in 2018." Moreover: "the figure for 2018 among Haredi women is lower than the figure published by the Central Bureau of Statistics," which stands at 6.64.
Gordon's explanation for the gap is that the CBS data is based primarily on a survey and is therefore prone to errors. This is in contrast to his study, which examined the data in the Population Registry.
However, Shahar Ilan notes in Calcalist that Gordon's data cannot identify converts and those who have left the Jewish religion because this is information that does not appear in the population registry. However, it can be assumed that they largely offset each other.
The study also examined fertility rates by Haredi group:
• The highest number of births among the streams was recorded, as expected, among Hasidic women - with 6.8 births in 2018 compared to 7.1 in 2008.
• Among Lithuanian women, the number of births is 6.3, down from 6.6 a decade ago.
• Among the Sephardim, the fertility rate is 5.0 children, quite similar to national religious groups, compared to 5.4 a decade ago.
The study also shows that the more children Haredi men have, the lower the percentage of those employed, despite the economic need to support more people.
For example, the employment rate of Lithuanian men with 1-3 children is 55%, but the employment rate of Lithuanian men with 5-6 children is only 33%.
The explanation: There is probably no causal connection between the two, but simply that a high number of children and staying in yeshiva probably both stem from conservatism.
