Israel's Christians: Marry late, have fewer kids

Statistics bureau data show growth rate of local Christian community 1%; Nazareth home to most Arab Christians – 22,300

Ynet|Published: 12.23.10 , 17:50

The 153,200 Christians living in Israel make up 2% of the country's population, data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics ahead of Christmas show.

According to the data, a little more than 80% of Israel's Christians are Arab. Most of the Christians who immigrated to Israel with their Jewish family members in the framework of the Law of Return arrived during the mass aliyah from the former Soviet republics in the 1990s.

Nazareth is home to the most Christian Arabs – 22,300 – followed by Haifa (13,700) and Jerusalem (11,500).

Haifa is home to the most Christians who are not Arab – 3,400 – followed by Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The annual growth rate of the local Christian community stands at 1%, compared with a 1.7% growth rate of the Jewish population and 2.6% growth rate of the country's Muslim community.

The data further show that Christian men get married relatively late, with the median age being 29.1. Jewish-Israeli men get married a year and a half earlier, on average, and Muslim men tie the knot three and a half years earlier.

However, Christian women in Israel get married earlier than Jewish women (median ages 24.5 and 25.5, respectively), but later than Muslim and Druze women.

In 2009, 2,514 children were born to Christian women in Israel – 2,009 of them to Arab Christians. Christian women give birth to an average of 2.2 children; Muslim women have 3.7 kids on average, while Jewish women give birth to 2.9 children.