Research Group about Demography, Birthrate and Culture in Israel
Colleagues,
Prof. Ilan Fuchs and I are organizing a United States-Israel research group to examine one of the most important demographic questions of the twenty-first century: the persistence of relatively high fertility rates in Israel amid widespread fertility decline throughout the industrialized world.
Across Europe, East Asia, and much of North America, fertility rates have fallen below replacement level, generating concerns about population aging, economic sustainability, labor force participation, and the future of social welfare systems. Israel presents a striking exception to these trends. As one of the few advanced industrial societies to maintain comparatively high fertility rates, Israel challenges conventional demographic theories that link modernization, urbanization, educational attainment, and economic development to declining fertility.
The research group will investigate the social, cultural, religious, economic, political, and historical factors that contribute to Israel’s demographic distinctiveness. Particular attention will be devoted to the interactions among family norms, religious beliefs, state policies, collective identities, migration, and gender relations. Rather than attributing fertility outcomes to any single factor, the project seeks to understand how these dimensions intersect to sustain childbearing across diverse sectors of Israeli society.
Bringing together scholars from demography, sociology, economics, history, political science, religious studies, public policy, and anthropology, the group will develop a multidisciplinary framework for examining fertility, family formation, and population growth in contemporary Israel. Comparative analyses of Jewish and Arab populations, as well as secular, traditional, religious, and Haredi communities, will be central to the project.
Our principal objective is the production of a major edited volume that offers a comprehensive examination of Israel’s demographic exceptionalism and its implications for broader debates concerning population sustainability, social cohesion, family formation, and demographic transition in advanced societies.
If you or colleagues in the greater New York metropolitan area would be interested in participating in or helping to shape this collaborative research initiative, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please Send us a proposal for a project and your contact information.
Best wishes,
Yehuda
Yehuda Klein, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Economics
Graduate Deputy Chair
Koppelman School of Business at Brooklyn College
YKlein@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Contact Information