Khaberni - A prominent Israeli demographic expert warned of an unprecedented "demographic disturbance," confirming that Israel is no longer attractive to immigrants and now suffers from a severe migration deficit, making it impossible to predict the future of the population.
Professor Itzik Shoshan, a leading Israeli demographer, said: "The Israeli demographic composition no longer adheres to the old laws and trends, as the year 2019 marked a turning point that broke Israel's monopoly on the highest fertility rates, and today, it is experiencing a comprehensive demographic disturbance that makes it difficult to predict the size and composition of the population in the coming decades.
According to Shoshan, founder and head of the Population Science Center at Tel Aviv University, this disturbance is manifested in a serious deviation from long-term trends in the three basic demographic processes: birth, death, and migration.
Shoshan warns that the intersection of these changes creates a situation of absolute "uncertainty" regarding the future of Israel's population.
Perhaps the most notable and concerning change lies in migration patterns. After decades of welcoming Jewish immigrants from around the world, Israel has in recent years suffered a significant deficit in migration balance.
Data reveal that between 2023 and 2024, about 90,000 Israelis left, with incoming migration not compensating for this number.
In 2024 alone, the emigration rate was three and a half times higher than the return rate, a stark indicator of a radical change in migration patterns compared to the previous decade. What’s more concerning is that preliminary data from 2025 indicate the continuation and escalation of this worrying trend.
The year 2019 marked a turning point in the fertility rate; starting that year, there was a slight but continuous decline, with the rate falling from about 3.1 births per woman to 2.9 births per woman by 2024.
These indicators mainly reflect a decrease in the fertility of Jewish women, while the fertility of Arab women has been steadily declining for decades.
Regarding death rates, data from the Central Bureau of Statistics revealed that the life expectancy of Israeli men has not risen since 2019. This stagnation comes amid accumulating crises: the coronavirus pandemic, ongoing war, and increasing violent crimes in the Arab community.
Shoshan points out that pandemics and wars are usually seen as short-lived events with short-term effects, but in Israel, the crises are ongoing, making it impossible to predict when men's life expectancy will return to the improvement trend that characterized it in the first and second decades of the twenty-first century.
As a result of the overlap in variables, Israel's population growth rate, which was close to 2% annually since the beginning of the second millennium, fell to about 1% last year.
Experts warn that this unprecedented demographic change poses existential questions for policymakers, with far-reaching implications for living standards and the government’s ability to endure.
Professor Shoshan, who delivered these words at the inaugural conference of the Population Science Center at Tel Aviv University, concluded that the Israeli demographic complexity (combining Mediterranean health patterns, Gulf states’ immigration policy, and unique fertility rates) makes it impossible to rely on the experiences of other countries, necessitating the highest priority be given to understanding these changing patterns in the Israeli priorities.
