Fertility differentials of Jewish women living in Israel and the West Bank
Israel is one of the most fertile developed countries in the world and has had a stable fertility rate since 1995. The country avoided the dramatic fall in fertility that has been observed in most Western countries. The fertility rate was of 2.96 children per woman in 2009 (Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2010, table 3.14). Maintaining such a high fertility level could be due to immigration and the “demographic war” between the different communities living in the country (Sardon, 2006). However, a significant difference between the levels of fertility of the jewish population of Israel and the West Bank has been observed for several years. In the literature, studies of fertility in Israel are conducted at a national level, which neither reveals nor explains the difference. Accordingly, Israel’s high fertility deserves a particular attention. This project aims to identify the different factors that affect the fertility of Jewish women living in Israel and in the West Bank. It will contribute to a better understanding of the fertility behavior of the Jewish population of the West Bank and may shed light on the complex mechanisms that govern the relations between Jews and Arabs in the Occupied Territories. With data collected in the General Social Survey of Israel of 2004, descriptive and explanatory analyses were produced. In the first part, factors influencing fertility in each region have been determined and an analysis of the importance of each factor on fertility was conducted in the second part. The outcome of interest is the number of children ever born to women aged 20 to 55 and the independent variables are: religiosity, education, monthly family income, employment status, country of origin, age and marital status. This study showed that Jewish women residing in the West Bank have an expected number of children 13% higher than their counterparts residing in Israel. It is also shown that the intensity of religious interest plays an important role in explaining the high fertility of Jewish women in both regions but its impact is more important in Israel. Education also plays an important role in reducing the expected number of children, especially in the West Bank. All of these factors contribute to explaining the different fertility levels in the two regions but the study shows that these factors do not provide an exhaustive explanation of higher fertility in the West Bank. There must be other forces that have an impact on fertility but which are not measurable such as nationalism or secularization, for example.
Fertility differentials Israel West Bank Religiosity