On the eve of Christmas 2019, approximately 177,000 Christians live in Israel; they comprise about 2% of the State of Israel's population.
In 2018, the Christian population grew by 1.5%, compared to 2.2% in the previous year.
77.5% of the Christians in Israel are Arab Christians. They constitute 7.2% of the total Arab population of Israel.
Most of the Arab Christians reside in the northern region of Israel: 70.6% reside in the Northern District.
41.3% of the non-Arab Christians reside in the Tel Aviv and Central Districts, as compared to 33.6% in the Northern and Haifa Districts.
The localities with the largest Arab Christian populations are Nazareth (21,900), Haifa (16,100), Jerusalem (12,700), and Shefar'am (10,300), as of the end of 2018.
855 Christian couples married in Israel in 2017. The average age at the first marriage of Christian grooms was 30.1, and that of Christian brides was 26.0.
In 2018, 2,721 infants were born to Christian women, about 76% of whom were born to Arab Christian women (2,067 infants).
The average number of children up to age 17 in Christian families with children up to this age is 1.87. Of those, the average number of children up to age 17 in Arab Christian families is 1.96 - smaller than the numbers in Jewish families (2.37) and Moslem families (2.77).
Women constituted 74.4% of Christian students studying toward a second degree, whereas 63.1% of all students studying toward a second degree were women. For third degrees, the percentages were 62.8% and 53.2%, respectively
Of all students studying toward a first degree, Christians were most highly represented in the following fields: information systems administration (15.3%), musicology (13.7%), and transportation engineering (10.9%).
Compared to Arab Moslem students, the percentage of Christian Arab students studying education and teacher training was lower, and the percentage studying engineering, architecture, law, and medicine was higher.
The largest percentage of pupils entitled to a matriculation certificate that met university entrance requirements was among Christian Arabs (70.9%). This was similar to the percentage of pupils in Hebrew education (70.6%), and higher than among Druze (63.7%) and Moslems (45.2%).
