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.
Thank you for your report from the ground. That is very valuable.
What really got me interested in the Israeli case is the discrepancy between secular Jews in America and secular Jews in Israel. According to my prejudices they should be quite similar but apparently they are not, at least not when it comes to childbearing.
The existence of a Haredi minority with very high fertility numbers should make it easier for everyone in Israel to have a large family. With five children in Sweden I am regularly met by amazement or irony ("don't you have a television?"). It does not bother me but it speaks of a general expectancy of small families which can probably constrain many people from having as many children as they would have liked.
The equation changes if a substantial section of the population already has a lot of children. No one will make jokes of your five children if the other neighbors have seven children. This should also lead to a more general acceptance of children in society which your observations sort of confirms. I doubt you can take your child with you to the office in Sweden. At least I have never heard anyone doing it.
Tove (the one of us who actually reads blogs) says that 8 months is the typical point in time where Substackers fold their blogging ambitions. Incidentally, Wood from Eden is just about 8 months old. My bitterness and lack of inspiration thus have a basis in perfectly sound statistics.
That said, I do not see us going anywhere in the near term. At least not Tove, who likes the format very much. Personally I am not as fond, but for lack of alternatives I will most probably stick around. Blogs have a number of downsides (it just hit me that I should write a blog post about that) but for literate nobodies like us they are also a great opportunity.
I too would like to see you continue blogging. I urge you to focus only on subjects you enjoy, maintaining whatever timetable that works for you, and forget whether or not it provides any opportunities that you expect.
I know, people work to get paid. They try exercise to become fit. They practice chess to master the game. They meditate to seek enlightenment. But their efforts are a struggle and bring modest and uncertain returns.
Fit people enjoy exercising. Master chess players play for fun. Expert meditators enjoy meditation. The road to success in these and other endeavors lies in the passion and enjoyment of the activity, which translates into consistent effort sustained over many years. In these things, those who work will earn little; it is play that earns pay.
The child benefits are actually a bit higher than this suggests - as of 2021, a married couple with children would together receive a total of 5 tax credit points per child aged 1-5, and 1 (this may be increasing) for each of child age 6-17. Each tax credit point is worth around $65 a month, though they're not refundable or transferable between the parents, each of whom only gets some (if they live and raise the children together). The exact details are here https://www.kolzchut.org.il/he/נקודות_זיכוי_ממס_הכנסה_להורה_לילד_עד_גיל_5#ריכוז_נקודות_הזיכוי_השונות_הניתנות_להורים_לילדים though I don't think an English translation exists.
Thank you very much for sharing your local knowledge.
Parental assistance policies seem to be inexorably complex. Writing this article I knew my lack of Hebrew googling skills would make me miss out on important information. Thank you for filling in the missing parts.
Another thing I did not find despite googling was a general article about the state of Israeli fertility and its causes. Being interested in this subject I had to collect the (limited) information myself and when I had done that I could just as well write up a text about it. Someone else, preferably an Israeli, would probably have done it better.
What is your opinion of the conclusion? Is the high Israeli fertility rate a cultural thing? People having lots of babies because people they know have lots of babies, magnified to an entire country?
It's tough to say. I have lived some time in America too so I can try to make a comparison, but I don't know that those differences are valid in general. For instance, in the middle class it seems common in America to delay children until buying a house in the suburbs, but I don't think that's true in other classes or in Europe. Also it's much more accepted in Israel for 18+ children to live with their parents longer, which puts them in a better financial position to support kids when they have them, but according to the statistics I've seen the countries where children live the longest with parents are Eastern European ones with the lowest fertility rate.
Israel also marries earlier than any European country besides Russia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. Though again those countries have low fertility, and the marriage age is driven down by Haredim and Arabs to a great extent (59% of Arab women and 56% of Haredi women are married by 21 years old). See https://www.timesofisrael.com/majority-of-israelis-marry-by-25-most-have-first-child-by-27/
The theory of inspiration from Haredim is interesting, though it's not something I've ever heard said explicitly. It made me wonder whether something similar existed for non-Mormons in Utah, but all I found were statistics showing that Mormon fertility is converging towards average American ones.
In the end, I don't think I can shed any more light on the specific reasons. But "it's just a cultural thing" doesn't feel like a strong enough explanation because it needs to explain how the same factors that lead to low fertility in other countries never took hold to the same extent.
The Mormon example is also very interesting. But, as you say, the Mormons are doing their best to converge with mainstream society so it might be hard to see any strong signals there. However, the Amish have Haredim-like fertility rates and are well clustered. If it is possible to get the relevant data one could compare non-Amish fertility rates in counties with lots of Amish with fertility rates in counties without Amish. I will look into it if I find myself with any free time.
How is the real estate market in Israel? A lack of proper (child-friendly) accommodation is usually quoted as a main reason not to have children in Europe. Since the real estate market, at least around major cities where young people usually want to live, is non-functioning, presumptive parents have to wait until their 30s before they can attain the housing standard they think is necessary to have children.
But all this is really mostly details. The major factor in the low fertility rate in OECD countries is that people do not want to have children. The total wanted fertility rate is a measurement of how many children women want to have if they may choose all by themselves. This is usually below 2 in Europe and only slightly above the actual fertility rate. I have not been able to find any data on the total wanted fertility rate in Israel but I assume it to be much higher than in Europe, even for the non-Haredim parts of the population.
Real estate is extremely expensive in Israel, as one might expect from a country with a growing population but a very small area (over half of which is desert). Also the minimum down payment is 25% by law, with 40% sometimes being required, which is much higher than in America and from a cursory look higher than many European countries. Unfortunately the OECD only seems to publish statistics on housing prices indexed per-country, so it's tough to compare it to other places.
But I wonder if the high prices just mean there's no expectation you'll be able to buy before you have kids, so people start earlier. I'm not sure what Europeans standards are, but here I have friends starting to have kids in two-bedroom rentals in the cheaper neighborhoods of the cities.
I would say that in Swedish cities it is entirely accepted to have children while living in a two-room rental. My impression is rather that people discover from experience how difficult it can be to do that thing. I am a prime example of that myself. When Anders and I had a one-year-old child, we thought it was a great idea to move to Berlin and live in a two-room apartment three floors above the ground. That experience cured my desire to ever live in a city again.
I know several people who have started families in two-bedroom rentals so I would say it is a perfectly honorable alternative in Scandinavia as well. A bigger problem here is probably the size of the housing. It is not honorable to raise kids if you can not provide them with a room of their own. And since even large houses seldom have more than four bedrooms most people are limited to three children or less.
housing costs in Israel are above the OECD average but not outrageous by any way.
I think it is fair to say that housing policies can not explain the Israeli fertility rate. If anything, the Israeli fertility rate is high despite the housing situation.
Anders, why are you sure there is anything to explain?
What makes Israel's fertility high for a modern western nation are the elements that are neither modern nor western: The Haredim (12%) have extremely high fertility, the Arabs (21%) are overwhelmingly Sunni with high fertility, and these two groups make up a third of the total population. You admit in your article that the secular Jews have fertility rates within the mainstream of other OECD countries. There's really no mystery here.
Also "no religious classification" does indeed mostly refer to non-Jewish Eastern Europeans, as you understood, but the main makeup of this group are those who had access to the Right of Return through a Jewish parent or Jewish grandparent despite not being Jewish themselves. This is something of a political hot button topic in Israel these days.
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.
Thank you for your report from the ground. That is very valuable.
What really got me interested in the Israeli case is the discrepancy between secular Jews in America and secular Jews in Israel. According to my prejudices they should be quite similar but apparently they are not, at least not when it comes to childbearing.
The existence of a Haredi minority with very high fertility numbers should make it easier for everyone in Israel to have a large family. With five children in Sweden I am regularly met by amazement or irony ("don't you have a television?"). It does not bother me but it speaks of a general expectancy of small families which can probably constrain many people from having as many children as they would have liked.
The equation changes if a substantial section of the population already has a lot of children. No one will make jokes of your five children if the other neighbors have seven children. This should also lead to a more general acceptance of children in society which your observations sort of confirms. I doubt you can take your child with you to the office in Sweden. At least I have never heard anyone doing it.
> why [do] Israelis want to have so many children?
Is it *really* so hard?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UASKxps3WsA
I will be sad if you stop blogging. I enjoy your posts.
Tove (the one of us who actually reads blogs) says that 8 months is the typical point in time where Substackers fold their blogging ambitions. Incidentally, Wood from Eden is just about 8 months old. My bitterness and lack of inspiration thus have a basis in perfectly sound statistics.
That said, I do not see us going anywhere in the near term. At least not Tove, who likes the format very much. Personally I am not as fond, but for lack of alternatives I will most probably stick around. Blogs have a number of downsides (it just hit me that I should write a blog post about that) but for literate nobodies like us they are also a great opportunity.
I too would like to see you continue blogging. I urge you to focus only on subjects you enjoy, maintaining whatever timetable that works for you, and forget whether or not it provides any opportunities that you expect.
I know, people work to get paid. They try exercise to become fit. They practice chess to master the game. They meditate to seek enlightenment. But their efforts are a struggle and bring modest and uncertain returns.
Fit people enjoy exercising. Master chess players play for fun. Expert meditators enjoy meditation. The road to success in these and other endeavors lies in the passion and enjoyment of the activity, which translates into consistent effort sustained over many years. In these things, those who work will earn little; it is play that earns pay.
The child benefits are actually a bit higher than this suggests - as of 2021, a married couple with children would together receive a total of 5 tax credit points per child aged 1-5, and 1 (this may be increasing) for each of child age 6-17. Each tax credit point is worth around $65 a month, though they're not refundable or transferable between the parents, each of whom only gets some (if they live and raise the children together). The exact details are here https://www.kolzchut.org.il/he/נקודות_זיכוי_ממס_הכנסה_להורה_לילד_עד_גיל_5#ריכוז_נקודות_הזיכוי_השונות_הניתנות_להורים_לילדים though I don't think an English translation exists.
Thank you very much for sharing your local knowledge.
Parental assistance policies seem to be inexorably complex. Writing this article I knew my lack of Hebrew googling skills would make me miss out on important information. Thank you for filling in the missing parts.
Another thing I did not find despite googling was a general article about the state of Israeli fertility and its causes. Being interested in this subject I had to collect the (limited) information myself and when I had done that I could just as well write up a text about it. Someone else, preferably an Israeli, would probably have done it better.
What is your opinion of the conclusion? Is the high Israeli fertility rate a cultural thing? People having lots of babies because people they know have lots of babies, magnified to an entire country?
It's tough to say. I have lived some time in America too so I can try to make a comparison, but I don't know that those differences are valid in general. For instance, in the middle class it seems common in America to delay children until buying a house in the suburbs, but I don't think that's true in other classes or in Europe. Also it's much more accepted in Israel for 18+ children to live with their parents longer, which puts them in a better financial position to support kids when they have them, but according to the statistics I've seen the countries where children live the longest with parents are Eastern European ones with the lowest fertility rate.
Israel also marries earlier than any European country besides Russia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. Though again those countries have low fertility, and the marriage age is driven down by Haredim and Arabs to a great extent (59% of Arab women and 56% of Haredi women are married by 21 years old). See https://www.timesofisrael.com/majority-of-israelis-marry-by-25-most-have-first-child-by-27/
The theory of inspiration from Haredim is interesting, though it's not something I've ever heard said explicitly. It made me wonder whether something similar existed for non-Mormons in Utah, but all I found were statistics showing that Mormon fertility is converging towards average American ones.
In the end, I don't think I can shed any more light on the specific reasons. But "it's just a cultural thing" doesn't feel like a strong enough explanation because it needs to explain how the same factors that lead to low fertility in other countries never took hold to the same extent.
Interesting insights, thank you again.
The Mormon example is also very interesting. But, as you say, the Mormons are doing their best to converge with mainstream society so it might be hard to see any strong signals there. However, the Amish have Haredim-like fertility rates and are well clustered. If it is possible to get the relevant data one could compare non-Amish fertility rates in counties with lots of Amish with fertility rates in counties without Amish. I will look into it if I find myself with any free time.
How is the real estate market in Israel? A lack of proper (child-friendly) accommodation is usually quoted as a main reason not to have children in Europe. Since the real estate market, at least around major cities where young people usually want to live, is non-functioning, presumptive parents have to wait until their 30s before they can attain the housing standard they think is necessary to have children.
But all this is really mostly details. The major factor in the low fertility rate in OECD countries is that people do not want to have children. The total wanted fertility rate is a measurement of how many children women want to have if they may choose all by themselves. This is usually below 2 in Europe and only slightly above the actual fertility rate. I have not been able to find any data on the total wanted fertility rate in Israel but I assume it to be much higher than in Europe, even for the non-Haredim parts of the population.
Real estate is extremely expensive in Israel, as one might expect from a country with a growing population but a very small area (over half of which is desert). Also the minimum down payment is 25% by law, with 40% sometimes being required, which is much higher than in America and from a cursory look higher than many European countries. Unfortunately the OECD only seems to publish statistics on housing prices indexed per-country, so it's tough to compare it to other places.
But I wonder if the high prices just mean there's no expectation you'll be able to buy before you have kids, so people start earlier. I'm not sure what Europeans standards are, but here I have friends starting to have kids in two-bedroom rentals in the cheaper neighborhoods of the cities.
I would say that in Swedish cities it is entirely accepted to have children while living in a two-room rental. My impression is rather that people discover from experience how difficult it can be to do that thing. I am a prime example of that myself. When Anders and I had a one-year-old child, we thought it was a great idea to move to Berlin and live in a two-room apartment three floors above the ground. That experience cured my desire to ever live in a city again.
I know several people who have started families in two-bedroom rentals so I would say it is a perfectly honorable alternative in Scandinavia as well. A bigger problem here is probably the size of the housing. It is not honorable to raise kids if you can not provide them with a room of their own. And since even large houses seldom have more than four bedrooms most people are limited to three children or less.
According to this OECD report: https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-income.pdf
housing costs in Israel are above the OECD average but not outrageous by any way.
I think it is fair to say that housing policies can not explain the Israeli fertility rate. If anything, the Israeli fertility rate is high despite the housing situation.
Anders, why are you sure there is anything to explain?
What makes Israel's fertility high for a modern western nation are the elements that are neither modern nor western: The Haredim (12%) have extremely high fertility, the Arabs (21%) are overwhelmingly Sunni with high fertility, and these two groups make up a third of the total population. You admit in your article that the secular Jews have fertility rates within the mainstream of other OECD countries. There's really no mystery here.
Also "no religious classification" does indeed mostly refer to non-Jewish Eastern Europeans, as you understood, but the main makeup of this group are those who had access to the Right of Return through a Jewish parent or Jewish grandparent despite not being Jewish themselves. This is something of a political hot button topic in Israel these days.
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.