Is there a connection between gender and migration? Apparently there is.
The Central Bureau of Statistics’ “Local Authorities in Israel”, published this week, shows the extent of inter-city migration – the migration between local authorities in Israel, in 2018. A total of 285,900 residents moved to another locality in Israel, of which about half (141,600) were women and about half (144,200) were men.
When examining socio-economic clusters and the size of the locality, the ratio of women to men is maintained, but when comparing Jewish localities (where more than 75% of the population is Jewish) to Arab localities (more than 75% of the population is Arab), it is evident that more women than men migrate to (and from) the Arab localities. The ratio of women migrating to Arab localities (10,360) to men migrants (7,330) was 1.41, compared with 0.96 in the rest of the localities in Israel, meaning that in the rest of the localities in the country, the number of male immigrants was slightly higher than the number of females.
In Jerusalem, too, the number of men who moved to the city (6,860) was slightly higher than the number of women (5,900), with the ratio of women to men standing at 0.86.
Another interesting group is older migrants. 14,600 of the inter city migrants in Israel were aged 65 and above, and they constituted 5.1% of all the migrants. This percentage is less than half of their share in Israel’s population, which stands at 11.8%. The rate of older migrants was relatively high among the migrants to established Jewish localities (clusters 9-10 in the socio-economic index), but even among the migrants to these communities, people aged 65 and over accounted for only 8% – a lower percentage of their share in the country’s population. Migrants aged 65+ constituted 4.2% of the migrants to Jerusalem in 2018.
