The curious case of Israeli fertility
Most people by now should have heard some version of the apocalyptic story that the world, or at least the Western world, are not producing enough babies, leaving us all to work until we turn 100, when we will receive a diploma before we continue working until we die of old age.
For several reasons, increased life expectancy most of all, this might not be as apocalyptic as some would have it. But it is hard to deny that fertility rates have dropped precipitously in most of the world and especially in the West (and the far east). While Europe and North America went through their demographic transitions a long time ago, recent decades have seen birth numbers plummet even further.
Demography puts great emphasis on replacement fertility, the number of children born to each woman that enables the population to remain constant. The replacement fertility rate is usually given as 2.1 (in fact it is quite a lot more complicated, but let us save that for some other time). The global fertility rate was 2.4 in 2020 meaning that humanity as a whole is in no immediate risk of dying out.
However, this overarching number conceals some substantial global differences. The fertility rate varies from 0.8 in South Korea to 6.7 in Niger. In fact, African fertility stands at 4.3 while the rest of the world, with some exceptions (mostly in the Middle East), have a fertility below 2.1. In fact there is no rich country with a fertility level above replacement level. Except for one.
Meanwhile in Israel
The OECD is a club of 38 rich or richish countries. The criteria for joining are a bit fuzzy but boils down to being a democracy and a market economy or, to phrase it differently, being part of the West. It was originally created as the OEED after World War II to help administer the American money flowing into Europe from the Marshall Plan. This is the reason that Turkey, which would probably have some problems if it tried to join today, was a founding member and still part of the OECD to this day.
These days OECD's main task is keeping statistics. Among the things it keeps statistics of is fertility rates. Of the OECD's 38 members only one, Israel, has a fertility rate over replacement level. And significantly so, Israel's total fertility rate is 2.9, a number no other rich nation comes even close to (depending on how you define rich nation some oil rich Gulf states can come close, but even they cannot match Israel's numbers, Oman is closest with a fertility rate of 2.8).
Why is this? Of course it helps to have large numbers of orthodox fanatics who believe it a religious duty to bear many children. Israel has significant numbers of Haredi jews with an average fertility rate of 6.64 (source in Hebrew). This is fertility numbers not even the Amish can match and of course it pulls up the numbers. But even completely secular Jewish women in Israel have a fertility rate of 1.96 (same source as above), which is more than the United States and all countries in Europe save Turkey (2.04).
How do they do it?
Customary knowledge in Europe says that in order to have a high fertility rate in a rich country you have to have good social policies and generous child benefits.
Israel has some child benefits. There is a monthly child allowance of 45-60 US dollars per child (depending on the number of children, source) until the child is 18 years old. There is a maternity allowance of the mother's full pre-birth income for 15 weeks. And there is subsidized childcare for children from the age of 3 months.
But Israel is in no way in the progressive frontline. In Germany, the child allowance is a monthly 219 euro per child (to be increased to 250 euro next year). Sweden provides parents 480 days (68 weeks) of paid parental leave per child. And the Israeli childcare subsidy is actually not that generous compared to most OECD countries.
The final proof that social policy is not to be credited with Israeli fertility is the fact that there are groups in Israel with low fertility. Not the Jews, not even the secular Jews. And not the Muslims, whose fertility rate is nowadays running neck and neck with the Jewish rate. But a third group, "women without a religious classification", has a fertility rate of only 1.35, levels more in line or a bit below other rich countries. This group seems to primarily refer to non-Jewish spouses of Jewish immigrants, often from Eastern Europe, a part of the world not famed for its high fertility.
Do you believe in magic
If social policy can not explain the high Israeli fertility rates, ideology must be the answer. There are historical reasons that might explain this. The Jews were decimated during the Holocaust and religious and secular Jews alike found reproduction to be an appropriate response to this.
However, this historical mission to repopulate the world does not explain why Israel's Jewish fertility has increased in the last decades. Of course the Haredim pull up numbers but fertility rates have increased for all types of Jews, not only Haredim, according to these statistics from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. Unfortunately, their statistics only reach back to 1979 (at least of the ones I can find), but from them it is possible to see that fertility rates for non-Haredi Jewish Israeli women declined gently until the early 1990s when births picked up again and increased gently until today. The Haredim is an outlier, their fertility actually increased continuously until the 2000s since when it has plateaued.
What might have happened in the early 1990s to make Israeli women deviate from women in other rich nations? One possibility is that this was about the time when Haredim started to be more than a curiosity. About thirty years ago the Haredim broke through the 5% level to become one twentieth of the Israeli population (I have calculated this myself using Israeli Haredim's very stable population growth of 4.3-4.5% per year, interestingly enough the Israeli statistics bureau seems not to have kept any special tag on the Haredim population until 2009, but it might, once again, be my lack of Hebrew searching skills that is to blame). This is a level where the Haredim just might have started to sway the common perceptions of what constitutes an ideal family size. Seeing lots of large Haredim families Israeli Jews of all stripes might have been inspired to increase their family size too.
This is sort of what this article from The Economist about the soaring Jewish Israeli birth rate concludes (the article is unfortunately paywalled). They give several "soft" explanations to the high fertility rate, all centered around the fact that Israeli society expects people to have many children. Everything from the fact that Jewish grandparents assume they shall look after grandchildren to the number of toy stores in an average Israeli city.
It is easy to prove that there is something fertile in the Israeli air. Just compare Jews in Israel with Jews elsewhere. Haredi Jews have stratospheric fertility rates both in Israel and in America. But while secular Jews in Israel have a fertility rate of close to 2 the corresponding number for non-religious Jews in the USA is an abysmal 1.0.
The real question should not be why Israelis have so many children but rather why Israelis want to have so many children (when the rest of the world seems disinclined to). My best guess is that Israel, for a multitude of reasons, has developed a culture where having many children is the norm. And when something is the norm, people will follow it.
Eager readers might wonder why I have not published anything for over a month. The primary reason for this is that Tove has refused several of my articles, something she only does rarely, which means it was probably for the best that they were not published. The secondary reason, definitely related to the primary reason, is that I do not feel very inspired to write these blog posts. This was always Tove's project and my role was as a sidekick. And she always had ulterior motives that seem unlikely to be fulfilled. I have started a small-scale campaign where I try to persuade her that we should stop writing blog posts that no one reads and return to writing books that no one reads. Even if successful this will not happen in an instant so you will probably see more articles from me, Tove can hardly refuse them all.
I think one of the most interesting aspects of Israeli demography is its sex ratio among newborns. 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. That is very normal, even a bit low. There have been persistent theories that the orthodox Jewish pattern of sexual relations result in more male offspring https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/is-it-really-all-in-the-timing/
The Israeli official numbers contradict that theory. By now there are so many Haredi newborns so if they were disproportionately male, that would show up in official statistics. And it doesn't.
I'm an American Jew and I've been living in Israel for a little more than a decade. I think this is basically right. I'd just like to add a few observations:
1) Pride in children's accomplishments is a really big thing in Jewish culture, definitely in the eastern European Jewish culture I grew up in but as near as I can tell it's just as big among Middle Eastern Jews. People talk a lot about how their kids are doing, what their kids are up to, how they get along with their kids, etc., even more so than the typical parent in America. Not having children is considered really tragic, and abandoning or neglecting your child is just considered monstrous beyond belief. Arguably, Israeli Jews have just preserved this culture that they brought with them, while American Jews have assimilated into the norms of broader American culture.
2) From what I can tell, a dead-beat dad in Israel, even one living in a low socio-economic status environment, has very few dating prospects. A parent who is estranged from their children is seen as an object of pity but also of horror and maybe fear—someone probably best to steer clear from, because they are not a normal human being. Likewise, children are expected to support elderly parents, financially if needed but also by being very actively involved in their care. Anyone who fails to do this is generally seen as a bad person who it's best to steer clear of.
3) There are a lot of pro-natal aspects of the way the economy and society are structured that may not show up in formal laws or statistics. For example, during school vacations, it's fairly normal for a parent to bring a child to work if they don't have any other child care arrangement. You'll see a kid in the corner drawing, reading, or playing on a phone in the middle of the office. There's no law that says this is OK, and some companies forbid it, but it seems relatively common. Likewise, there's a more understanding attitude towards employees leaving early to pick up a kid from school, or that kind of thing.
4) The theory of Haredi influence is interesting and original, I have not heard it before. Generally speaking, secular Israelis would be loath to acknowledge such an influence. But I think there may be something to it. The Haredi political parties are very focused on advancing policies that support families, especially those with large children, and I suspect some of these may be unconventional in nature and not show up in direct comparisons with other countries—like subsidized summer camps and various after-school programs, which Haredi parties pushed but which in the end probably end up subsidizing more camps for secular kids than for Haredi kids. I suspect the influence is less individual couples looking at the Haredim and saying "let's do that," and more that the presence of so many large families means that a lot of parks, bus routes, and other kinds of public infrastructure need to be set up in a way that takes the convenience of large families in mind.
But I also agree with comments here questioning whether "secular" means the same thing in Israel as in other countries. Many people in Israel are not strictly Orthodox but they in fact participate regularly in religious rituals, whether private ones like reading psalms daily or public ones like attending Torah classes and discussion groups. From what I understand of it, religious life in Israel is much less bureaucratized and more bottom-up than what you see in Europe. There isn't a centralized bureaucracy assigning Rabbis or controlling synagogues, it's fairly standard to have a neighborhood synagogue that is just run by lay members and funded by donations, an informal Torah study group that meets in someone's house once a week, or a local charity initiative that is religiously-based but has no formal organization behind it. Often, participants in these kind of activities are proud to be part of it, but don't feel pressure to start keeping the Sabbath or otherwise adopting strictly Orthodox practice. The upshot is that there is more faith and also a lot more faith-based community building going on than you might think from reading that most Israelis are "secular."
5) There is a long-standing theory that says Israelis have more children because of the fear of losing a child in war. I suppose this won't stand up if you compare Israel empirically to other conflict zones. But I do think somehow there is a sense here that children are more worth putting your time and energy into than anything else. I think it's probably also related to having a population that's mostly made up of recent descendants of refugees. So many people have a mom or a grandpa who they saw growing up, who had education, money, and social status in Iran or Poland or Russia or Germany, and then had to move suddenly to Israel, and then all they really had was their family. The idea of being old and childless just strikes Israelis as sad and even scary, in a way that I think it might not for people living in a society that's had more long-term stability. On the other hand, Germany has seen a lot of instability too, and yet they don't have so many children. So I agree with you Anders, this is still kind of mysterious.