In first, Israeli population growth said to drop below 1%; life expectancy also down

Citing ‘very unusual figure,’ Taub research institute blames negative migration, declining fertility for ‘the start of a new era of demographic development in Israel’

For the first time since the establishment of the state, the annual population increase over 2025 is expected to fall below one percent, according to a report released Wednesday by an independent Jerusalem-based research institute.

The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel assessed the increase as 0.9 percent. However, later figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics put the number at 1.1 percent, the joint lowest figure recorded. The reasons for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

“This is a very unusual figure,” said Prof. Alex Weinreb, the Taub Center’s director of research and an expert in demography.

Last year, the census office said that the country’s population growth dropped to 1.1 percent, from 1.6% a year earlier and 2.2% in 2022. The Taub Center report pointed out only two other years since the establishment of Israel in 1948 in which the annual population increase fell below 1.5%: 1981, when it dipped to 1.42%, and 1983, at 1.35%.

Weinreb attributed the phenomenon to three factors: a rise in the number of deaths due to a larger number of people reaching their 70s and 80s, negative migration figures, and a decline in the fertility rate — the number of births per woman.

“We are at the start of a new era of demographic development in Israel,” he said. “The period of record natural increase has passed, and that is alongside a less stable and even negative migration balance, two factors that are a clear break from past patterns.”

Birthrates, historically high in Israel compared to Western nations, have held steady despite the dip in fertility rates, but the death rate is slowly rising, the Taub report said.

The Taub report also found that in 2024, for only the fourth time in the past 100 years, the migration rate was negative, with 26,000 more people moving abroad than those coming to live in the country. In 2025, that gap is expected to grow to 37,000, the center found.

Most of those leaving are Israelis who were not born in Israel, and a third of them are not considered Jewish. The emigration rate among non-Jews is 8.1 times higher than that of Jewish Israelis, whether or not they were born in the country. Nonetheless, there has also been an increase in Jewish Israelis leaving the country, the center said.

According to the report, the figures show a “significant change” in the source of Israeli population growth, which in the past was 80% natural. In recent years, the balance has shifted, and due to the drop in fertility rates, combined with more deaths from an aging population, migration is playing a more significant role.

The Central Bureau of Statistics released figures earlier this week showing that life expectancy has dropped slightly.

According to the CBS, which gave an assessment for 2024, the life expectancy for Israeli men was 81.3 years, down from 81.7 in 2023. Among women, it slipped to 85.4 in 2024 from 85.7 the year before. The figures did not include those killed during the Gaza war that was ongoing at the time. There have been similar dips in the past.