As part of events marking Jerusalem Day, which this year celebrates 55 years since the city was reunified in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research has published its 36th annual report on the city, which provides an in-depth statistical look at the capital.
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The report said that Jerusalem remains Israel's second-largest metropolitan area, encompassing 86 communities and home to 1,373,000 residents. One out of every 10 Israelis is a Jerusalemite, and the city proper remains Israel's largest, by a large margin. At the end of 2020, Jerusalem was home to 951,000 people. The city's growth is identical to population growth nationwide.
Like other metropolitan areas in Israel and abroad, Jerusalem is seeing its population decline, and in 2020 lost some 7,800 residents, with 38% of former Jerusalemites moving to other communities in the greater Jerusalem area. The year 2021 saw an unusually high rate of population loss, with the Central Bureau of Statistics reporting that the city's residents had dropped by 10,900.
Partial statistics from the CBS put Jerusalem's population at 965,100 at the end of 2021, 1.5% more than in 2020.
In 2020, 570,000 of the city's residents (61%) were Jewish and 366,800 were Arab (353,800 Muslims and 12,900 Christians). Since 1967, the percentage of the city's Jewish residents has dropped from 74% to 61%, while Arabs made up 26% in 1967 and in 2020 comprised 39% of the population.
As of 2021, 257,000 Haredi Jews called Jerusalem home – comprising 45% of the city's Jewish population and 28% of its overall population. Religious Zionists, traditional Jews, and secular Jews comprised 29% of the population in Jerusalem.
The city remains one of the poorest in Israel, with over half of the children in Jerusalem living below the poverty line. In 2020, 38% of Jerusalem families were living in poverty, accounting for 43% of the city's residents and 53% of its children.
The report was submitted to President Isaac Herzog this week, who noted that "the data show how even when everyone uses scary words like 'population decline,' the Jerusalem metropolitan area is still strong. Jerusalem is still an ancient city, but behaves and changes like a young, vibrant city."
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said, "Jerusalem is undergoing a revolution whose fruits can already be seen. Our well cared-for city is undergoing a major upgrade of its roads and infrastructure that is making it stunning from above and innovative and advanced from below."
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