Figures show 80.4% of country's Christians are Arabs, Nazareth has largest Christian community; average family size is two children.

Christian citizens of Israel make up roughly two percent of the country’s population or 153,000 people out of the 7.5 million population, according to figures released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics ahead of Christmas Day on Saturday.

According to the figures, 80.4% of the Christians in Israel are Arabs and the rest are immigrants that arrived in the country together with Jewish relatives under the Law of Return, including children who were born in the country. The majority of those under the second category of Christians arrived in Israel during the large waves of aliya from the Former Soviet Union.

Among the cities where Christians reside in Israel, Nazareth has the largest community with some 22,000 people; Haifa follows with 14,000, Jerusalem with 11,000 and Shfaram has 9.2 thousand Christian inhabitants.

The CBS statistics also show the make up of Christian families in Israel, indicating that the average family size includes two children, slightly smaller than the 2.2 for Jewish families and the three for Muslim citizens of Israel. The average age for Christians in Israel to marry is 29.1, two years older than in the Druze community and three years older than in the Muslim population, the statistics found. In 2008, 806 Christian couples married in Israel, most of them from the Arab sector.

Of the 2514 babies born to Christian woman in 2009, 80% were Christian Arabs and the rest were from a wide range of communities living in Israel. Out of those not from the Arab community, 7% were born to Israeli-born Christian woman; 39% to women born in the Former Soviet Union; 14% to Ethiopian Christian woman; 10% to Romanian woman and 7% in the Filipino community.

In terms of the labor market, the data revealed that roughly 57.8% of the Christian population is employed, 66.2% of the men and 49.7% of the women. Out of the men that are employed, 22% work in industry and 17% in construction; of the women, 21% work in education and 20% in the health or welfare services.

Jpost