The most popular baby names in Israel and other baby stats

Children constitute 42% of the Arab population, compared to only 31% of the Jewish population, Central Bureau of Statistics reports.

By LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZI
A baby sits in front of an Israeli flag (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
A baby sits in front of an Israeli flag
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
In 2013, there were 2.68 million children under the age of 17 living in Israel, comprising some 33% of the general population, according to a report by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) published on Tuesday.
The report was released ahead of Universal Children’s Day, which is observed annually on November 20th.
According to the CBS, 1.9 million children (70.6%) are Jewish, 707,000 are Arab (26.4% of the population), and 80,000 (3%) are either non-Arab Christians or religiously unaffiliated.
Some 31% of the children are under age 4, 28.1% are between the ages of 5-9, 26.1% are between the ages of 10-14, and 14.4% are between the ages of 15-17.
The data further show that children constitute 42% of the Arab population, compared to only 31% of the Jewish population.
Of the Jewish children, 97% were born in Israel while 78% are second-generation Israelis.
The report also found that children make up some 40% of Jerusalem’s population, while only 20% of Tel Aviv’s population.
In 2013, some 171,000 babies were born in Israel, of whom 127,000 were born to Jewish mothers and 35,000 to Muslim mothers.
The most common baby names for 2013 included Noa, still the most popular girl’s name for 15 years, followed by Shira, Tamar, Talia, and Maya, which were also the top five names for 2012. Yael, Adele, Sara, Avigail, and Ayala rounded off the top 10 most popular girl names.
For boys, Noam, Ori, Itai, and Yosef were the five most popular names, the same as the previous year. David, Daniel, Ariel, Yonatan, Eitan, and Moshe rounded off the top 10 list for boys.
According to the report, in 2012 some 1,400 girls under the age of 17 were married, accounting for 2.7% of all marriages.
Some 83% of these girls were Muslim and 55% of them were married in the Jerusalem district; 14% in the North and 17% in the South.
With regard to education, the findings indicated that out of some 199,000 boys between the ages of 15-17, 90.5% attended school, 2% worked and did not go to school, and 7.5% did not work or go to school. Among 186,000 girls of the same age, 93.7% attended school, 0.9% worked but did not go to school, and 5.4% neither studied nor went to school.
Divided by sector, among some 271,000 Jewish youth aged 15-17, 4.9% did not study or work (6% of boys and 3.8% of girls). In contrast, in the Arab sector among 107,000 youth, 10.3% did not work or go to school (11.2% of boys and 9.3% of girls).
The report also indicated that, during the 2012/13 academic school year, the percentage of all high school students who qualified for a matriculation certificate was 72%, compared to 69.5% the previous year. In the Jewish sector, the rate was 76%, compared to the Arab sector’s 60%. In addition, in the Jewish sector 79% of girls qualified for a matriculation certificate, compared to 73% of boys.