Religious Demography: Education and fertility among Israeli Haredi women

Nadia’s presentation, entitled Religious demography: Education and fertility among Israeli Haredi women, focused on a pressing contemporary concern; the demography of the Israeli Haredi community. In recent decades, there has been something of a revolution in Haredi women’s education and employment. Normally, education among women is associated with a decline in fertility as educated women tend to have fewer children. An analysis of administrative data from the Central Bureau of Statistics reveals that Haredi women do not conform to this pattern as there is no link between education and family size in this community. Haredi women have maintained high fertility rates despite increasing education levels. This may be attributed to the fact that many women learn in Haredi institutions and are therefore not exposed to liberal values or because the primary impact of fertility is noted for the transition from no education to school education, rather than from school to higher education.