Jerusalem - Facts and Trends 2017
Pub No. 476
Jerusalem: Facts and Trends 2016
Pub No. 461
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Publication Year: 2019
Jerusalem: Facts and Trends – The State of the City and Changing Trends provides an up-to-date picture of Jerusalem across a wide range of topics, including population, employment, education, construction, and tourism. The publication is intended to present the main findings of the Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem in an accessible manner, by means of a brief narrative description accompanied by graphs and illustrative maps that help the reader understand developments in Jerusalem, the largest and most complex of Israel’s cities.The main source of the data presented here is the Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, which contains some 250 tables and dozens of graphs. The Yearbook is published annually by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and the Municipality of Jerusalem. The data that appear in the Yearbook are collected from numerous and varied sources, chief among which are the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Municipality of Jerusalem, and the National Insurance Institute.
Jerusalem is Israel’s most populous city. At the end of 2017 its population numbered 901,300, accounting for 10% of Israel’s population. Jerusalem has the largest Jewish population in Israel, at 559,800, as well as the largest Arab population, at 341,500. The population of Jerusalem is the most diverse among Israel’s cities. One of the factors that distinguishes among the various groups in Jerusalem is the nature of their religious identification. At the end of 2017 Jerusalem’s population totaled 901,300 residents: 61% in East Jerusalem (in areas added to the city in 1967) and 39% in West Jerusalem. Both Jews (38%) and Arabs (62%) resided in East Jerusalem, whereas 99% of West Jerusalem’s residents were Jewish.
The poverty rate in Jerusalem (45%) is higher than the rates in Israel at large and in its other major cities (4%-23%). In 2017 the poverty rate among the city’s Jewish population (25%) was significantly lower than the rate among its Arab population (78%).In 2017 Jerusalem had a total of 223,10020 households as follows: 157,400 Jewish households (71%) and 63,200 Arab households (28%). The Jewish population accounted for a higher share of households (71%) than its portion of the city’s population (62%). This discrepancy is attributable to the relatively large number of small households within the Jewish population.
Jerusalem attracts visitors from across the country and the around world because of its unique cultural and religious heritage, its status as Israel’s capital city, its centrality for the Jewish people as well as its sanctity for the three monotheistic religions, and the historical and archeological sites and cultural centers it has to offer. The past three years have seen a gradual increase in the numbers of guests and overnight stays in tourist hotels37 in Israel generally and Jerusalem specifically. In 2018 the number of guests and the number of overnight stays in Jerusalem’s tourist hotels were the highest ever recorded – 1,792,900 guests (17% of all hotel guests in Israel) and 4,937,600 overnight stays (20% of all overnight stays in Israel’s tourist hotels).
On October 30, 2018, elections were held for the municipalities and local and regional councils in Israel, including Jerusalem. The number of eligible voters in Jerusalem totaled 638,100. Five candidates ran for the position of mayor. Because none of them received at least 40% of the votes, a second round of voting was held between Ofer Berkovitch and Moshe Lion, the two candidates who had received the largest numbers of votes. In the second round, Moshe Lion received 51% of the votes. In the city council elections, the Hit’orerut (Awakening) party gained 7 seats, followed by Degel HaTorah and Shas, with 6 and 5 seats, respectively.
Migration to and from Jerusalem