The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) released data on Jerusalem's population Monday in honor of Jerusalem Daym which begins Wednesday night. The CBS information showed that in recent years, the Jewish fertility rate in the capital city has increased to the point where it now equals the Arab rate.
Both Jewish and Arab Jerusalemites now bear an average of four children, and the parity contradicts claims that the population soon will overtake that of Jews.
The total population of Jerusalem stood at 774,000 at the end of 2009.
Data showed a trend of one-way assimilation when it came to neighborhoods of the city that were regained in 1967, after falling under Jordanian control in 1948. While Jews and other non-Arabs have moved into the post-67 areas, few Arabs have moved in the opposite direction. 98 percent of Jerusalem's Arab residents live in neighborhoods that were temporarily under Jordanian control.
Thirty-nine percent of Jerusalem's Jews and other non-Arabs live in post-67 neighborhoods. In total, 42 percent of the residents of post-67 Jerusalem are Jewish or other non-Arab..
While fertility rates are identical for Arabs and Jews, Jews appeared to be more affected by negative migration, which stood at 7,100 for 2009, with 12,800 people moving to Jerusalem and 19,900 leaving the city.
Those who left went primarily to Jewish towns in the greater Jerusalem area.
Jerusalem is unusually religious, data showed. Hareidi-religious Jews live in Jerusalem at a rate 3.6 times higher than their percentage in Israel as a whole, while non-hareidi religious Jews are 1.4 times as common in the capital as elsewhere. The percent of non-religious Jews in Jerusalem is less than half of that in the country as a whole.