The most revealing measure of inflation in the new statistical annual is its price –IL 170. Compared to last year’s annual which cost IL 95, this is an increase of some 80%. The new annual has some details about world Jewry. At the end of 1977 there were 14,260,000 Jews in the world, 21% of them ( 3,020,000 ) in Israel.
World Jewry has not yet reached its number on the eve of World War II –16.7 million. At the present growth rate, the number of Jews in the world will reach the same level only at the end of the century. The new annual shows a decrease in the birth rate in Israel. The number of new births last year was 95,315, a decrease of 3.5% compared to the 98,763 born in 1976. The rate of families with more than seven persons decreased in the last decade from 12% to less than 10%. Most of the decrease is in the Jewish population, specifically among Jews of Asian and African origin.
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