Key findings:
A rise in mortality rates and a drop in life expectancy: The Covid-19 pandemic has driven mortality levels significantly upward: 60% of Covid-19 deaths in Israel occurred in 2021. The new variants (at least until Omicron) have raised the case fatality rate for the disease among younger people, which will push life expectancy in 2021 down to 2016-2017 levels. It does not appear that there will be a return to pre-pandemic mortality patterns while vaccination rates worldwide remain low, since the absence of vaccination allows more variants to emerge and spread across the globe, with a continuing impact on mortality and life expectancy.
Israeli fertility rates are higher than those of other developed nations, but the patterns are changing: Between 2018 and 2020, even before the pandemic hit, Israeli fertility rates fell sharply in all sectors. In 2020, the fertility rate for Jewish women was 3.0 children per woman, while for Christian women the rate was 1.83 – a decline of 0.2 children in both population groups. In the Druze sector, the fertility rate dropped to 1.94 children per woman – a first-ever dip below 2.0 children – while in the Muslim sector fertility rates have steadily declined, reaching 2.99 in 2020. For “other” women (primarily those who are not Jewish according to religious law), the fertility rate sank below 1.5 children per woman.
The Covid–19 crisis led to a rise in fertility rates among Jewish women in Israel: In many countries, the pandemic resulted in lower fertility rates. Demographers agree that, in most cases, the crisis accelerated trends that had been in place during the pre-Covid-19 period, and that fertility rates may be expected to fall even lower in 2021 in those countries where a downward trend had already been observed, reaching unprecedented lows, for example, below 1.6 in the US and the UK. For Jewish women in Israel, by contrast, the reaction has been different, and a rise in fertility rates has been observed. Births up to December 2020 were the result of pre-pandemic conceptions, and the general fertility rate for Jewish and other women was below that of 2019. By March 2021, however, the general fertility rate had climbed above the 2019 level, and between March and September 2021 there was a rise of 6% in the number of births to Jewish and Other women. The general fertility rate for Arab Israeli women dropped until February 2021, after which it recovered slightly, but overall it has remained below the 2019 rate. Had the pandemic not erupted, the fertility rate of Arab Israeli women would likely have fallen even lower.
We do not yet know whether the upswing in Jewish women’s fertility rates reflects a change in timing of fertility (parents had planned to have a child a year later anyway) rather than a true “baby boom” (parents giving birth to an extra child they had not planned). In either case, the acceleration will have long-term effects on the size of a given age cohort, which in turn will have an impact on education and the labor market.
Immigration to Israel has grown in recent years, but the Covid-19 crisis did not lead to further rises: Net immigration to Israel has risen over the past 15 years, due to rising immigrant numbers and lower emigrant numbers. During the period 2015-2019, total immigration ranged from 26,000 to 33,000 persons per year. The Covid-19 pandemic led to a sharp reduction in immigration to Israel; the figure for 2020 was 19,700, with the decline attributable to lower immigration from Russia and the Ukraine. Across the first 11 months of 2021, the number of immigrants recovered but was lower than in 2019. This is surprising given the Israeli government’s expectations of a large immigration wave known as “Corona Zionism.” These expectations were based on a rise in the number of immigration files opened, and on growing interest in Israeli real estate on the part of foreign buyers impressed by Israel’s relatively successful handling of the pandemic in its early stages. Likewise, no major wave of returning residents was observed in the wake of the pandemic.