Israel’s population nears 10 million mark as country enters 2021

With a total of 151,000 new additions in 2020, Israel’s general population stands at nearly 9.3 million, including 6,870,000 Jews (73.9%), 1,956,000 Arabs (21.1%) and 465,000 people (5%) belonging to other ethnic groups. 

In other words, Israel’s population grew by 1.7% in 2020. Some 84% of that was due to natural population growth, subjected to the number of overall births and deaths, while 16% was due to international migration into the country. Data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics before have previously indicated that the country’s population will reach 10 million by the end of 2024, 15 million by 2048 and 20 million by 2065.

In 2020, some 176,000 babies were born in Israel. Some 73.8% of the newborns were born to Jewish families, 23.4% to Arab families and 2.8% to other ethnic groups. While Jewish births corresponded to the population, Arabs had over 2% more births relative to their population, taken from other ethnic groups that had more than 2% less.

Some 50,000 people died in Israel during 2020. In July, as Israel struggled to contain the spread of coronavirus, the percentage of deaths caused by the virus spiked. However, it has been steadily declining since the end of October.  

Immigration into Israel significantly decreased during 2020, mostly due to the coronavirus pandemic. Attempting to limit the spread of the virus, Israel closed its borders several times, banning visitors from foreign countries on different occasions. Besides obviously affecting the country’s tourism industry, the step had a dramatic effect on the people seeking or able to make aliyah (immigrate). 

Between January and October of 2020, only 15,800 people made aliyah, 42.6% less compared to 2019. Overall, some 20,000 people made aliyah in 2020, compared to 34,000 in 2019. The major countries from where people made aliyah were Russia (38.1%), Ukraine (15.1%), France (11%) and the US (10.7%).