On the eve of Christmas 2020, approximately 180,000 Christians live in Israel; they comprise about 2% of the State of Israel's population.
The Christian population grew by 1.6% in 2019.
77.1% of the Christians in Israel are Arab Christians. They constitute 7.1% of the total Arab population of Israel.
Most of the Arab Christians reside in the Northern District (70.4%) and in the Haifa District (13.4%).
41.0% of the non-Arab Christians reside in the Tel Aviv and Central Districts, as compared to 33.8% in the Northern and Haifa Districts.
The localities with the largest Arab Christian populations are Nazareth (21,700), Haifa (16,300), Jerusalem (12,900), and Shefar'am (10,400), as of the end of 2019.
785 Christian couples married in Israel in 2018. The average age at the first marriage of Christian grooms was 29.9, and that of Christian brides was 26.3.
In 2019, 2,409 infants were born to Christian women, about 74% of whom (1,785 infants) were born to Arab Christian women.
The average number of children up to age 17 in Christian families with children up to this age is 1.87. Of these Christian families, the average number of children up to age 17 in Arab Christian families is 1.97 – smaller than the numbers in Jewish families (2.41) and in Moslem families (2.69).
In the 2019/20 school year, 26,858 Christian students – 1.5% of the total number of students – attended primary and secondary schools.
The highest percentage of students entitled to a matriculation certificate that met university entrance requirements (and who were potential candidates for continuing their schooling in institutions of higher education) was among Christian Arabs, at 71.2%. This figure was similar to the percentage of students in Hebrew education (71.4%), and higher than among Druze (64.5%) and Moslems (45.1%).
In the 2017/18 school year, 217 Christian students attended pre-academic preparatory learning institutions.
51.6% of the Arab Christians continued their studies toward a first degree within eight years of graduating high school, compared to only 33.7% of the total number of high-school graduates in the Arab school system.
The proportion of women among the Christian students was higher than women's proportion among the total number of students in all degrees and particularly in the advanced degrees: 64.3% and 53.7%, respectively, of those studying for a third degree, and 70.7% and 62.9%, respectively, of those studying for a second degree.
Of the total number of students studying toward a first degree, Christians were most highly represented in the following fields: management information systems (11.2%), musicology (11.0%), and food engineering and biotechnology (10.4%).
Compared to Moslem Arab students, the percentage of Christian Arab students studying education and teacher training was lower, and the percentage of those studying medicine, engineering and architecture, and law was higher.
The percentage of participation in the labour force in 2019 among Christians aged 15 and over was 66.8% (70.1% of men and 64.0% of women). This figure was 56.1% among Christian Arabs (63.2% of men and 48.8% of women).
Approximately 18,000 Christians – a rate of 103 per 1,000 persons – were registered at the Ministry of Labor, Welfare, and Social Services in 2019. This percentage was lower than that of Moslems who were registered (approximately 188 per 1,000 persons) and Jews who were registered (109 per 1,000 persons).
