New local Israeli stats show birth rates, mortality, taxes, and much more
Israel by the numbers: Joblessness is highest in Bnai Brak; 50.1 of Tel Avivians rent their homes; Kfar Shmaryahu uses the most water
Data released Sunday by the Central Bureau of Statistics painted a broad picture of Israeli society, showing, for example, that half of Tel Aviv’s residents rent their apartments, that Bnei Brak has the highest rate of unemployment, and that residents of Kfar Shmaryahu use six times the amount of water that average Israelis do.
Data gathered from the 255 local authorities in Israel, which include 77 municipalities, 124 local and 54 regional councils, showed on average 68.1 percent of Israelis own their homes, but 50.1% of Tel Avivians pay rent.
Bnei Brak’s 6.2% of residents looking for work is almost 50% higher than the national jobless rate of 4.1%. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv-Yafo residents pay the highest per-capita tax at NIS 6,900.
Israel’s national statistics service issues hundreds of reports annually letting Israelis know how the country is doing in numbers, but also giving government and industry valuable data for future planning. Sunday’s comprehensive report presented statistics on a range of indicators including employment, health, education, road accidents, taxes and and criminal convictions.
At the end of 2017, the population in Israel was 8,797,900, of whom 74.8% lived within the municipal boundaries of the survey. Israel’s population density was 387.4 people per square kilometer and Bnei Brak was the most densely populated city at 26,368 inhabitants per square kilometer .
Water consumption per capita in 2017 was 52.6 cubic meters, with the lowest water consumption measured in the Bedouin town of Arara Banegev in the desert near Beersheba — only 29.0 cubic meters per person. The highest was in Kfar Shmaryahu, where residents, many of whom own swimming pools, used a whopping 325.4 cubic meters of water each, or more than six times the national average.
Residents of the coastal Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa had a mortality rate of 9.3 deaths per 1,000 residents between 2013 and 2017, while the lowest rate of 3.2 per 1,000 was shared by Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut and Shoham. The national average was 4.2.
Conversely, the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modi’in Illit had the highest birth rate rate with 7.7 babies per thousand residents. Kiryat Tivon and Isfiya ranked lowest, at 1.8 births per thousand residents. The national average was 3.1.
Education statistics also varied widely, with Rahat in the Negev holding the dubious record of the city with the highest percentage of residents without matriculation certificates (44.7%) — more than twice the national average (19.5%). At the other end of the scale, almost half of the adult residents of Modiin-Macabim-Reut (49.7%) have a college degree.
Comprehensive annual reports like the one released Sunday are compiled from thousands of different numbers tabulated from different sources, so that the 2017 report is only published in 2019.
