Our community by the numbers
A new report based on the 2021 census and released this week provides a snapshot of the Jewish community and sheds light on the demographic changes ahead.
Members of the Jewish community joined their fellow Australians in filling out the census on the evening of August 10, 2021. The census provides a snapshot of Australia so that governments and civil service organisations may understand the populace and plan for the future. And while the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its datasets in 2022, demographer and JCA NSW research consultant David Graham delved further, as he does for each census, to paint a picture of our community. These are his findings.
Growth & immigration
Australia’s Jewish population was estimated at 116,967 in 2021, 0.46 per cent of the total population of 25.4 million.
“We’ve reached what I would call a plateau,” Graham said, noting the community had grown strongly in the 1980s, 1990s and into the turn of the century.
“That growth has dramatically slowed. Around 2016 we hit a peak … and essentially we’re in, at the moment anyway, a very gradual decline, and it’s very difficult to see that reversing.”
But that doesn’t mean we’re “staring into the abyss”, he said. “It’s been very gradual, and it will continue to be very gradual.”
Much of that growth has been due to immigration. In the census, 57 per cent of Jews said they were born in Australia, while 81 per cent of Jews have at least one parent born overseas. The largest overseas-born Jewish populations were from South Africa with an estimated 15,368 Jews (13 per cent) and Israel with an estimated 8077 Jews.
“In terms of immigration, [it] has been the big driver of the Australian Jewish story. We benefited enormously,” Graham said, citing immigration from the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, South Africa in the 1990s and later from Israel.
“We’re still seeing migration, especially from Israel, now our largest migrant group. But the numbers that are coming are a shadow of what we’ve been enjoying for several decades.
“It is difficult to see where a significant net migration is going to come from. That era is over for the foreseeable future. We are where we’re at, and we have to now move forward and make the most of the community that we currently have.”
Where we live
Ninety-four per cent of Australian Jews lived in capital cities, with 84 per cent in either Melbourne (an estimated 53,373 Jews) or Sydney (an estimated 43,738).
Looking at specific suburbs, the strongest Jewish growth between 2011 and 2021 was in Bentleigh East (Melbourne) at 12 per cent. The greatest decline was seen in St Ives (northern Sydney), which was down 27 per cent.
“There are several drivers of internal movement – bang for buck, extra space for young families, and … [from] NSW up the [Gold] Coast. That’s more for retirement, and there was probably an element of pandemic impact there … a little bit of a blip for the community around Byron Bay at the time the census was taken,” he said.
“So migration is driven by all sorts of different factors internally, but we are also continuing to see the decline of some communities and the decline of the population on the north shore as they move to the eastern suburbs in NSW.
“Overall, however, Sydney is a net donor to Melbourne. Melbourne is a less expensive lifestyle, housing is more affordable. There has been a consistent picture over the last decade or so of net migration away from Sydney and towards Melbourne.”
Within the major cities, the census also found Jews are twice as likely (29 per cent vs 14 per cent) to live in apartments.
“Jews have this very interesting tendency to congregate in very small urban areas. Jews want to live near other Jews and communities,” Graham said.
“So we’re densely crammed into urban areas and into very specific parts of the urban areas.”
The ageing conundrum
Between 2011 and 2021, the number of Jews aged 70-74 increased by 4320. Meanwhile, over half of Jews who needed “assistance with core activities”, an estimated 3688 people, were aged 75 and above.
Population modelling also indicates that in 10 years’ time, the number of Jews in their 80s is set to “dramatically increase”.
Graham said this would bring significant challenges.
“We have a very large baby boomer population. And in the 2021 census, that group was well into their early 70s and for now, people in their 70s are healthy, and on the whole mobile, and their care needs are relatively limited,” he said.
“But that starts to become increasingly different as they enter their 80s. So the next decade or so, we’re going to see a very large increase in the number of people requiring care, both in their homes and of course, care home help as well.
“If you are aware of a large increase in demand on the very near horizon, you need, as a community, to plan for that and take measures accordingly,” he continued.
But he said the real challenge is “that’s not a long-term picture, because it’s a kind of a bubble”.
“They’ll come and then they will pass on. And what we don’t want to do is build all these brand new facilities all over the place that suddenly will have no demand for them.”
Kids & school
In 2021, an estimated 18,289 Jewish children attended school. While a 12 per cent rise on 2011, most of the increase was in the secondary school sector, which grew by 19 per cent.
“There was a boom in the primary kids in 2016. That peak has now passed, and the follow on is that there’s a boom that we’re in the midst of, of the number of kids of secondary school age,” Graham said.
“But again, these aren’t permanent changes … the number of kids will shrink, not because of any demand change, because there are simply fewer kids.”
Additionally, data from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority indicates 48 per cent of Jewish children attended Jewish schools in 2021. This has declined from 54 per cent in 2011.
“We need to ask ourselves, why did that happen? I don’t have that answer, that’s an entirely different discussion. But that is one of the more interesting pieces of data you can get from a census. You can understand what’s happening in the Jewish community.”
Intermarriage
In 2021, seven out of 10 Jews (70 per cent) who were living with their partner (married or de facto) had a Jewish partner. 16 per cent had a partner who reported no religion and 14 per cent had a partner who reported an other religion (mostly Christian). In 2011, 80.3 per cent reported having a Jewish partner.
In addition, Jews were more likely to have a non-Jewish partner in areas with smaller Jewish communities like Queensland, South Australia and other parts of Australia.
“Certainly, the smaller the population we find, the higher the level of intermarriage, and vice versa,” Graham commented.
“Is that because there are just fewer Jews around? My argument would be that the kind of Jewish person who is choosing to live in these, from our point of view, more remote areas are not as Jewishly engaged to start with. They’ve decided not to live in the big, dense Jewish community centres. There’ll be individuals that defy the average, but on average, they’re going to be less Jewishly committed.”
Mental health
A new question for the 2021 census was about long-term health conditions, with 10 such conditions listed, plus “other”. The most common of the 10 experienced by Jews was “mental health condition”, suffered by an estimated 10,694 Jewish people (9.4 per cent).
Jewish women were twice as likely to report suffering from such a condition.
“The mental health data we’ve never had before, not just on mental health, but on a number of long term health conditions, including heart disease and arthritis, diabetes, cancer, that sort of thing,” Graham said.
“There are some very interesting things about this mental health data. We see it peaks among Jews in their early 20s. It peaks among the general population of that age group, too. So, what’s going on?”
While it was “impossible to say” whether COVID-19 exacerbated the prevalence, he said there are theories as to why people in their 20s have a higher level of mental health conditions.
“The suspicion is, it is related to this social media world we are immersed in, and they have grown up in. That is one of the stronger theories.”
As to why twice as many women recorded suffering a mental health condition, Graham said there are two possibilities.
“One is that women are more prone than men to mental health problems for whatever reason,” he said.
“I’m no medical doctor. Though as a social scientist, I can tell you that men are far less likely to tell a survey, even a census, that they have some sort of weakness. So I suspect what we’re really seeing is a reporting bias, [rather] than an actual medical difference. But that would need some further looking into.”
The religion question
On how the wording of the religion question itself – the answer in the top line of the form was “no religion” – may have impacted on respondents saying they were Jewish, Graham said it was difficult to ascertain given that the new wording’s introduction in 2016 coincided with the census having technical problems that year.
“My hunch is that because 2021 ran very smoothly from a technical point of view, people were more confident about the census … they knew what to expect, they knew there was going to be a religion question there,” he said.
“We’ve lost a few thousand people permanently who would otherwise perhaps have written in Jewish, I think that’s the new normal.
“But in the big scheme of things, I don’t think that’s the main issue from the community’s numbers point of view.”
Good & bad news
“A lot of it is doom and gloom,” Graham said.
But he said there are some very important positives we need to bear in mind.
“Jewish births outnumber Jewish deaths, and that has been the case for the last decade at least,” he said.
“We as a community have incredibly high levels of education relative to everyone else. We occupy the most prestigious jobs. We live in some of the nicest parts of the nicest cities, and we have some of the highest incomes of any group,” he said.
“So from a socio-economic point of view, we’re doing incredibly well in this country. It has been great for the Jews to be in Australia.
“But there is a final negative demographic fact,” he warned.
That is the Jewish fertility rate, which sits at 1.71 children per woman, down from 2.16 in 2011.
“What probably happened there is the pandemic. The pandemic influenced this census in fabulous ways, and one of the things that happened is people don’t have babies when the future is uncertain,” he continued.
“There was a big dip around then, which I would have expected to have rebounded in subsequent years. So while our fertility is probably not going to be a 2.1 – we probably are below replacement – the impact of the pandemic in the data must be sort of borne in mind.
“But yes, fertility is low. If it’s below 2.1, we’re not going to grow that way.”
Read the full report:
jca.org.au/the-jewish-population-of-australia-key-findings-from-the-2021-census
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