The Central Bureau of Statistics says Israel’s birthrate trended downward in 2020, during the first year of the pandemic.
The fertility rate in 2020 was 2.9 children per woman.
The birthrate fell by 3.8% from its peak in 2018.
Israel still has the highest birthrate in the OECD, Ynet says.
The report records 177,307 births in Israel in 2020, with 73.3% born to Jewish women, 21.7% born to Muslim women, 1.4% to Christians and 2.4% to Druze.
The average age for a mother having her first child was 27.7.
Modiin Illit, an ultra-Orthodox community, had 7.16 children per woman, the highest rate in the country.
Jewish women had an average of three children per woman, and Arabs had 2.82, the report says.
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