“Israel has been in a constant baby boom since independence.”
This comes from a normally understated source, Wikipedia. And it’s true! Even in wartime.
From day one, Israelis have loved babies. For the past 76 years, we brought lots of them into the world – relatively more than in other Western country, where a baby bust has long been prevalent. And we continue to do so.
This drive for procreation endures even during hard times. Despite it all, a new wartime baby boom is underway in Israel.
Many countries have experienced baby booms after wars. Israel may be among the first to experience a baby boom during an ongoing war.
Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Rachel Fink noted that despite 15 months of war, “Israel is experiencing a 10 percent increase in births during the final months of 2024 – after recent indications that Israel is experiencing a downturn in fertility.”
She quoted Shlomo Winker, head of the Leumit Health Care Services medical division, who noted that a surge in the birth rate after a period of war or national tragedy is a known phenomenon. Yet “…the current baby boom is surprising, given that such surges usually occur after the war has come to an end.”
Take my own family, for instance. My wife and I have been blessed with the birth of three great-grandchildren in the past year or so. We are sad when we think of friends, grandparents, in countries where babies are rather rare.
Let’s look at the data.
Israel’s fertility rate (children per woman) in 2024 was almost three. The comparable figure for the US is roughly half that. Same for Europe. Same for Russia (1.46), and lower for Japan (1.26).
Declining birth rates create a paradox. It results in a shrinking labor force, hence a shortage of workers. Yet, in many countries – the US, the UK, the EU – there is a massive backlash against immigrants, a key source of labor, as seen in a sharp turn to the Right in politics.
There is a more subtle effect related to national energy. When I visit countries with low birth rates, I sense a noticeable paucity of national energy. These countries feel like giant homes for the aged.
The US, Europe, Russia, China, and Japan are all below replacement – that is, natural increase is not enough to maintain the population. In China, the fertility rate, 1.18, reflects the one-child policy that China is desperately trying to reverse, in light of a labor shortage and shrinking population. Israel’s fertility rate is at present double that of the world average, 1.5.
China, Japan, and some European countries have sought to offer monetary incentives for couples to have children. But so far, the plan has failed. The birth rate needle has not budged.
True, Israeli Ultra-Orthodox fertility is 6.1, boosting the average. But secular women’s fertility rate still far exceeds that in Western countries.
Baby booms in history
Demographers claim that post-war baby booms date back to the early 1700s.
In the 1930s to early 1940s, new births in the United States averaged 2.3 to 2.8 million annually. In 1946, the first year of the post-war baby boom, new births spiked to 3.47 million. New births continued to increase, leading to a peak of 4.3 million births in 1957 and 1961.
During the US baby boom in 1946-64, some 78 million babies were born. The oldest among them are now reaching retirement age.
I wrote my PhD thesis on the US baby boom, observing that the deer-in-the-python bulge of births continually surprised US governments as the boomers grew into adulthood, even though their impact – their need for schools, colleges, health care, and jobs over time – was easily predictable as the boomers grew from children to adults.
Japan too had a baby boom, in 1947-49, and then an echo-effect boomlet in 1971-74, when the boomers themselves had children. Same for the US. These “echo boomers,” Generation Y, or millennials, make up nearly one-third of the US population.
Russia’s baby boom followed not war but the recovery after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2012, the number of births outnumbered deaths for the first time since the Soviet Union was established. Ukraine, too, had a modest baby boom following the Orange Revolution in 2004-5, when mass protests finally brought a pro-West leader to the presidency.
Not only wars can bring baby booms in their wake. So can pandemics.
Ireland saw the birth rate rise sharply in 2021, the first annual increase since 2009. COVID brought “lockdown babies” into the world.
More boys than girls
There is a curious statistic regarding baby booms. In normal times, on average 5% more boys are born than girls. In post-war baby booms, that rises to 8% – the boy-girl ratio increases by 60%.
Nobody knows why male births spike after wars. One theory is that babies conceived early in the woman’s cycle tend to be male – and baby boom babies tend to be conceived early in the cycle.
In Israel, in age groups of 15-64, men and women are roughly equal in numbers. The way this works is interesting. Some 10% more boys than girls are conceived. But more male embryos than female ones die before birth. Five percent more boys than girls are born.
The life expectancy of women exceeds that of men by four years: 84.7 years for women, 80.7 years for men. The result is that at age 65 and older, there are 22% fewer men than women. This means there are more widows than widowers – a social problem not currently well addressed.
Post-war baby booms in Israel
A Taub Center study by its research director Prof. Alex Weinreb examines birth rates after the Six Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur War (1973), and the Gaza War. He found that “in the aftermath of both of the earlier wars, there was an immediate positive impact on fertility, with fertility rising in 1968 and in 1974 back to the trendline, then climbing above the trendline for an additional two years.”
Weinreb confirms a surprising fact about 2024. “Fertility in Israel took a new direction in the first five months of 2024, and instead of continuing to decline it returned to its 2022 level and even surpassed it.”
Moreover, he adds, “the largest rise [in fertility] was among Jewish women.” The annualized total fertility rate of Jewish women between August and October 2024 was 3.19 children per woman, 0.4 children higher than in June-July, and 5% higher than during the same months in 2022.
Weinreb also notes a not fully expected rise in aliyah in 2024. “…23,150 olim moved to Israel in the January-August 2024 period. That was higher than the number of olim in the equivalent period in any year in the 2012-2021 period other than 2019. …Israel sustained higher than average numbers of olim during the first year of war. That is an accomplishment.”
How can we best understand Israel’s baby boom? I believe it is related to the notion of the Jewish people as an am segula (“a unique moral nation”).
The Egyptian, Persian, Roman, Greek, Ottoman, and Mongol empires have all fallen. The Jewish people emerged from the Holocaust, and we thrived.
A strong theme of our Bible is that of continuity. “Choose life,” the Torah says. We are taught to pass our values on to our descendants, and we are taught why it is vital to have descendants. Holocaust victims survived against the odds and built new families, many of them in Israel.
Babies are beautiful, every single one. It is what we live for. With them, we build our future. Without them, there is no future.■
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.