--- title: "8. Jewish population change" description: "Jewish people make up 0.2% of the world population. Jews rose in number by 6% from 2010 to 2020, mostly due to growth in Israel." date: "2025-06-09" authors: - name: "Conrad Hackett" job_title: "Associate Director, Research/Senior Demographer" link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/conrad-hackett/" - name: "Marcin Stonawski" job_title: "Guest Author" link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/marcin-stonawski/" - name: "Yunping Tong" job_title: "Senior Researcher" link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/yunping-tong/" - name: "Stephanie Kramer" job_title: "Senior Researcher" link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/stephanie-kramer/" - name: "Anne Shi" job_title: "Senior Researcher" link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/anne-shi/" - name: "Dalia Fahmy" job_title: "Senior Writer/Editor" link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/dalia-fahmy/" url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/jewish-population-change/" categories: - "Buddhism" - "Christianity" - "Hinduism" - "Islam" - "Judaism" - "Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project" - "Religious Characteristics of Demographic Groups" - "Religious Demographics" - "Religious Identity & Affiliation" - "Religiously Unaffiliated" - "Size & Demographic Characteristics of Religious Groups" --- # 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: - *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*](https://www.gov.il/en/pages/the-aliya-story) 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](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/10/10/445343896/in-israel-a-new-battle-over-who-qualifies-as-jewish) are *not* classified as Jewish by the government based on halakhic criteria. - *“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](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/) and [2020](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population/) 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](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12397-023-09486-x#Sec6). ### 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](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/02/09/europes-jewish-population/). [![Table showing the world’s Jewish population increased by less than 1 million from 2010 to 2020](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/PR_2025.06.09_global-religious-change_08-01.png?w=1024)](https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=260773) 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. numoffset="25" For consistency with other religious groups, this report uses a definition of Jewishness that is based on *current religious self-identification *when available (from countries other than Israel)*. *This definition includes people who say they are Jewish when asked about their religion in censuses or surveys. It does not count people who identify with other religions, or those who don’t have any religious affiliation but consider themselves Jewish for other reasons, such as ethnicity, ancestry or culture.] 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. [![Table showing most Jewish population growth since 2010 has been in the Middle East-North Africa region](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/PR_2025.06.09_global-religious-change_08-02.png?w=1024)](https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=260774) ### 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. [![Table showing most Jews live in North America or the Middle East](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/PR_2025.06.09_global-religious-change_08-03.png?w=840)](https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=260775) 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. [![Table showing 46% of all Jews lived in Israel in 2020](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/PR_2025.06.09_global-religious-change_08-04.png?w=840)](https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=260776) 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. This is a slightly higher estimate of the Jewish share of Israel’s population than was reported by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on Dec. 31, 2019. The CBS reported that [74% of the population was Jewish](https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/mediarelease/Pages/2019/Population-of-Israel-on-the-Eve-of-2020.aspx). The bureau includes the Arab population in East Jerusalem as part of Israel’s population. All country populations in this report are based on the United Nations’ population counts. The UN’s estimate of Israel’s population does not include the Arab population in East Jerusalem. For more detail, refer to the [Methodology](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/global-religious-change-methodology/). More information about the Jewish population in Israel is available in our 2016 report “[Israel’s Religiously Divided Society](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/).”] 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. For more information about the more broadly defined Jewish population in the United States, read our report “[Jewish Americans in 2020](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/).”] 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. --- **Next:** [9. Religion in Asia and the Pacific](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/religion-in-asia-and-the-pacific.md)