Jerusalem

People

Jerusalem is one of Israel's most populous city, and its population continues to grow rapidly thanks to a high birth rate and the arrival of new immigrants, many of them from the former Soviet republics. Since 1986, the city's population has grown by 28 percent, with peripheral neighborhoods, such as Manchat and Pisgat Ze'ev, recording the greatest increases. At the end of 1996, Jerusalem's population was 602,100, and it is expected to reach 650,000 by 2000.

As of 1996, Jews accounted for 70 percent of the city's inhabitants, with Arabs making up the rest. Of the city's Arabs, 92 percent were Muslim and eight percent Christian. Because of Jerusalem's large non-Jewish and Orthodox Jewish populations—both of which tend to have large families—young people account for an unusually large percentage of the city's population: in 1996, 44 percent of the population was aged zero to 19 (including 13 percent aged zero to four) while only eight percent were senior citizens.