This coming Monday, Christmas will be celebrated around the world, a holiday in which Christians celebrate the birthday of Jesus. These celebrations can also be found in certain places in Israel, and in anticipation of the upcoming holiday, the Central Bureau of Statistics publishes the data about Christians in Israel.
According to the latest data, about 187,900 Christians live in Israel today, making up about 1.9% of the country's population, an increase of 1.3% from last year. 3% of the Christians in Israel are Arab Christians, which is 6.9% of the total Arab population in the country, and most of them live in the Northern District and the Haifa District. About 7% of the non-Arab Christians live in the Tel Aviv area and the center.
It is not surprising to know that the settlements with the largest Hebrew Christian population are Nazareth (20.8 thousand), Haifa (16.8 thousand), Jerusalem (13 thousand) and Shefaram (10.6 thousand). As for marriage, in 2021, 815 Christian couples were married in Israel, where the average age at first marriage for Christian grooms is 30.7, and for brides it is 27.4. In Israel in 2022, 2,343 babies were born to Christian women, of which about 73% were to Arab Christians, when the total fertility rate for Christian women in that year was 1.68 children per woman on average. Among the Arab Christians the rate was even lower and stood at 1.62 children per woman.
In the field of studies, in the past year 26,776 Christian students studied in primary and secondary education, which make up 1.4% of all students in Israel, but only 1% of the Christian students in the twelfth grade were entitled to a matriculation certificate. There were 6,700 Christian students in higher education, of which 94.7% were Arab Christians. Among all undergraduate students, the highest representation of Christian students was in the study of musicology (16.0%), transportation and traffic engineering (10.9%) and management of information systems (10.7%).
