The Jewish birthrate in Israel has been rising steadily since the June, 1967 Six-Day War but is still far behind the local Arab birthrate, according to the new statistical yearbook published today. During the past three years Jewish births have risen from 21.5 per 1000 to 24.2. The birthrate among Israeli Arabs is almost twice as high but a decade ago it was nearly triple the Jewish rate, the statistics showed. They also showed that the birthrate is falling among Oriental Jewish families and rising among Western Jews, apparently as a result of assimilation between the two groups. The average Jewish urban family here has 3.9 members. According to the statistical yearbook, the world Jewish population in 1968 was 13,765,000. The statistics disclosed that only 14 percent of Israeli families own a car. Half of native-born Israelis have telephones but only 12 percent of those families whose breadwinner was born in Africa or Asia possess the instrument.
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