Although Jews make up about 0.2% of the global population, they account for 1% of migrants worldwide—five times their expected proportion, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center.
“Israel is the most frequent origin country among Jewish migrants and also their top destination,” Pew found. “Of the major religious groups, Jews are by far the likeliest to have migrated. One in five Jews reside outside of their country of birth, compared with smaller shares of Christians (6%), Muslims (4%), Hindus (1%), Buddhists (4%) and the religiously unaffiliated (2%).”
Christians made up the largest number (about 47%) of those living outside their country of birth as of 2020, according to the Pew analysis, which drew upon data from the United Nations, and 270 surveys and censuses. Muslims were the next largest group (29%), followed by Hindus (5%), Buddhists (4%) and then Jews.
Nearly half (47%) of Jewish migrants were born in Europe, followed by the Middle East and North Africa (26%)—largely in Israel and Morocco. Smaller percentages of Jewish migrants were born in Asia-Pacific (8%), Latin America and the Caribbean (8%), North America (7%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (4%).
Today, most (54%) Jewish migrants live in the Middle East and North Africa, largely in Israel. More than one in five (21%) now live in Europe, followed by North America (16%), Latin America and the Caribbean (6%), Asia-Pacific (4%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (less than 0.5%).
Israel was “far and away the top destination for Jewish migrants,” with 51% of the 3 million Jewish migrants (1.5 million) residing in the Jewish state as of 2020, per Pew’s analysis. Some of the largest numbers of Jewish migrants who made aliyah were from Ukraine (170,000), Morocco (160,000) and Russia (150,000), according to the analysis.
Some 14% of Jewish migrants (400,000) live in the United States, while 4% (120,000) live in the United Kingdom, and 3% (100,000 each) live in Australia, Russia, Germany and France. As of 2020, some 50,000 Jewish migrants now live in Judea and Samaria, according to the analysis, which considers someone who moves from Israel to Judea and Samaria to have migrated.
Some 110,000 Jews moved from Israel to the United States, per the analysis, compared with 70,000 American Jews who had made aliyah.
“The global stock, or total number of Jews living outside their countries of birth, grew from an estimated 2.3 million in 1990 to 3 million in 2020 (up 28%),” per the analysis. “Jews had the smallest increase among the religious groups in this analysis, smaller than the rise among Hindus (48%) and the religiously unaffiliated (67%).”
“The foreign-born Jewish population in Israel grew from 1.3 to 1.5 million (up 14%), and in the U.S. it increased from 290,000 to 400,000 (up 41%),” it added.