8. Jewish population change

Jews are the smallest religious group analyzed separately in this report, accounting for 0.2% of the global population. Most Jews live either in North America (primarily in the United States) or in the Middle East-North Africa region (almost exclusively in Israel). Jews make up less than 2% of the overall population in each of those regions.

Challenges of measuring Jewish identity

Estimating the size of the world’s Jewish population is complicated. Data sources variously measure Jewish religious identity, ethnic identity, or a mix of the two. The number of Jews around the world depends largely on one’s definition of Jewishness.

For consistency with other religious groups around the world, we rely, when possible, on censuses and surveys that measure religious affiliation with Judaism. Due to data limitations, in some countries, we use sources that employ a slightly different approach to measuring Jewish identity:

1. Israeli government counts. Our estimate of the number of Jews living in Israel comes from the Ministry of Interior’s population register that counts as Jews only those who meet halakhic (religious) legal criteria – i.e., children of Jewish mothers as well as people who have undergone formal conversions. Many people who do not meet these criteria are still eligible to make aliyah and become Israeli citizens based on other ties to Judaism, but they are classified as non-Jews by the government regardless of their personal religious identity. Consequently, the register data we rely on to make estimates of the number of Jews in Israel may count some people as Jewish based on halakhic criteria even if they do not self-identity as Jewish by religion. At the same time, some people who identify religiously as Jewish are not classified as Jewish by the government based on halakhic criteria.
2. “Core Jewish population” estimates from Sergio DellaPergola’s World Jewish Population dataset. DellaPergola, a leading expert on the demography of global Jewry, has made estimates of Jewish populations using Jewish community records and surveys as well as national census and survey data on religion and ethnicity. His “core Jewish population” numbers are designed to include people who identity as Jewish by religion, as well as people who do not identity with any religion but nonetheless identify otherwise as Jewish.

In the United States, the definition of Jewishness used in this report – based on self-identification with Judaism as a religion – results in a much smaller estimate of the number of Jewish Americans than Pew Research Center has previously provided using a broader definition. In our 2013 and 2020 surveys of Jewish Americans, we counted respondents as Jewish if they said either that Judaism is their religion or that they consider themselves Jewish aside from religion (for reasons such as ethnicity, culture or family background); have at least one Jewish parent or were raised Jewish; and don’t belong to any other religion. Using that broader definition, there were an estimated 7.5 million Jews of all ages in the U.S. in 2020, about 1.8 million more than this report’s estimate of the number of Americans who identify religiously as Jewish (5.7 million).

Another challenge in measuring Jewish populations is that Jews are minorities in countries outside Israel, and their populations are often too small to measure reliably with surveys. (Jews account for less than 0.01% of the population in most of the world’s countries and territories.) Furthermore, in some national censuses that measure religion, “Jewish” is not a response option.

DellaPergola, whose estimates we chose as the best source of Jewish numbers in many countries, has described estimates of Jewish populations as “permanently provisional” in nature.

Global change

The number of Jews around the world grew by 6%, from an estimated 14 million in 2010 to nearly 15 million in 2020. That’s fewer than the estimated 16.6 million Jews who were alive in 1939, prior to the Holocaust.

Our estimates for Israel are based on the Ministry of Interior’s population register of Jews in Israel. Outside of Israel, we generally use a definition of Jewishness based on self-identification with Judaism as a religion.²⁵

During this time, the rest of the world’s population grew about twice as quickly. Despite this gap, the share of the global population that is Jewish still rounds to 0.2%.

Regional change

Jews grew in number in three regions and declined in three others. In the Middle East-North Africa region, Jews grew to a population of almost 7 million (up 18%). The number of Jewish residents also increased slightly in the Asia-Pacific region (up 2%) and North America (up 1%).

The Jewish population of sub-Saharan Africa, already small in 2010, shrank to 50,000 individuals (down 37%). Jews also declined in the Latin America-Caribbean region to 390,000 (down 12%). In Europe, the Jewish population fell to 1.3 million (down 8%).

Jewish shares of regional populations held fairly steady, including a small decline of about 0.1 point in North America.

Regional distribution of Jews

Jews are heavily concentrated in the Middle East-North Africa area and in North America, with the vast majority of Jews (87%) living in one of these two regions.

Between 2010 and 2020, the Middle East and North Africa surpassed North America to become the geographic region with the largest Jewish population. This is primarily because Israel added over 1 million Jews to its population between 2010 and 2020, compared with an increase of just 30,000 in the U.S.

As a result, the share of the world’s Jews who live in the Middle East-North Africa region increased to 46% (up 4 points), while the share who live in North America fell to 41% (down 2 points).

The Middle East and North Africa was the only region that saw an increase in its share of the global Jewish population between 2010 and 2020.

Countries with the highest Jewish counts

Israel and the United States are the only countries with millions of Jewish residents; 85% of Jews worldwide live in one of these two countries.

Nearly half of all Jews live in Israel, which has a 77% Jewish majority and is the only country in which Jews make up more than 2% of the population.²⁶

Four-in-ten Jews worldwide live in the U.S., where they make up 1.7% of the population, when using a definition of Jewishness that is based solely on identification with Judaism as a religion.

Using a broader definition of Jewishness that includes people who identify, religiously, as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” but who say they consider themselves Jewish for reasons aside from religion (such as culture, ancestry or family background) and who have at least one Jewish parent, Pew Research Center has estimated that there were 7.5 million Jews in the U.S. in 2020, making up slightly more than 2% of the U.S. population.²⁷

The overwhelming majority of Jews (96%) live in one of the 10 countries with the largest Jewish populations, for a combined count of 14.2 million. About 500,000 Jews live elsewhere in the world.

Where did the Jewish share of the population change the most?

Between 2010 and 2020, the Jewish population did not grow or decline substantially (by at least 5 percentage points) in any country or territory.

Recommended Citation: Hackett, Conrad, Marcin Stonawski, Yunping Tong, Stephanie Kramer, Anne Shi and Dalia Fahmy. 2025. “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.” Pew Research Center. doi: 10.58094/fj71-ny11.