Introduction

Select data on Christian population (at the end of 2010):

Marriage and fertility

Households and families

Employment

Education - Christian students

Achievements in the matriculation examinations

Higher education and science

Introduction

On Christmas Eve 2011 there were 154,500 Christians living in Israel, who constitute 2% of the population of the State of Israel. (The estimate is temporary and does not include the Christians among the foreign workers living in Israel, who are not citizens). 80.4% of the Christians in Israel were Christians of Arab ethnicity; the remainder were mainly Christians who immigrated to Israel with Jewish members of their families mainly from the former Soviet Union.

Most of the Christians of Arab ethnicity live in the north of the country, whereas Christians of other ethnicities are spread throughout the various districts.

The towns with the largest Christian populations of Arab ethnicity were:

Nazareth (about 22,200), Haifa (13,800), Jerusalem (11,600) and Shfaram (9,300).

The largest communities of Christians of other ethnicity were concentrated in the three large cities: Haifa (3,300), Jerusalem (3,000) and Tel Aviv (2,800).

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Select data on Christian population (at the end of 2010):

The composition of ages in the Christian population differs from that of the Muslim population, and is more similar to the composition of ages in the Jewish population.

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Marriage and fertility

758 Christian couples were married in Israel in 2009, most of them Christians of Arab ethnicity.

In 2010, 2,511 children were born to Christian women, of whom 79% were Christians of Arab ethnicity (1,985 children) and 526 Christian Women of different ethnicity.

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Households and families

In 2010, there were about 60,000 households in Israel headed by a Christian (of which 48,000 were households of Christian Arabs), which constituted about 3% of all households in Israel.

Since 1992, the size of the average Christian household has decreased from 4.2 to 3.5 persons. One of the causes contributing to this change is the addition of Christians who immigrated from the former Soviet Union, who are characterized by relatively small households.

In 68% of the households headed by a Christian, the head of the household was a Christian Arab. The average size of these households is 3.7 persons.

About 52,000 of the Christian households (85%) are “family” households, which encompass at least one family; the non-family households, in which one person lives alone or in which a number of unrelated persons live, constitute about 15% of the Christian households.

In Israel, about 53,000 Christian families, half of all the Christian families, are families of a couple with at least one child up to the age 17, a rate that is similar to the Jewish families (45%) and compared with 71% of the Muslim families.

The average number of children up to age 17 in Christian families with children up to that age is 2.2, similar to the Jewish families (2.3) and lower than the Muslims (3.1).

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Employment

The percentage of participation in the civilian workforce among Christians age 15 and over was 58.0%. This percentage among Christians of Arab ethnicity was 52.4%. In comparison, the percentage of participation among Jews was 60.6%.

In 48,300 Christian households there was at least one employed person.

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Education - Christian students

Elementary and post-elementary students - 2010-2011

The number of Christian students in primary and post primary education is 28,400, constituting 1.9% of all active students. The vast majority (88.3%) of Christian students are of Arab ethnicity.

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Achievements in the matriculation examinations

Over the years, the Christians of Arab ethnicity have had the highest rates of success in the matriculation examinations, both in comparison to the Muslims and the Druze and in comparison to all students in the Jewish education system.

The Christian Arabs also had higher rates of accessibility to higher education than the other groups.

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Higher education and science

Christian students - 2009-2010

In the 2010 school year, there were 5,300 Christian students, constituting 1.8% of all students in the institutions of higher education in Israel.

Among the Christian students, 92.3% were Arabs (4,900 students) and 7.7% were new immigrants who arrived under the Law of Return (400 students).

Among Christians Arab students studying toward a bachelor’s degree, the main subject was law (11.4%) and after that came social sciences (9.3%), nursing (4.8%), economics (4.5%), business administration (3.7%), computer science (3.7%), general studies in the humanities (3.5%), electrical engineering (2.7%) and English language and literature (2.5%).

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