One in five Jews worldwide live outside their birth country, making them the likeliest of the major religious groups by far to have migrated, according to new Pew Research Center analysis published Monday.
Pew said its analysis is based on all adults and children living outside their birth country in 2020, regardless of when they moved.
While Christians compose the largest religious migrant group, at 47% worldwide, Jews are the most likely to have migrated by percentage, according to Pew, despite being the smallest religious migrant group at 1% worldwide. Christians are the next closest group likely to have migrated, at 6%, Pew said.
Israel is the top destination for Jewish migrants, with 1.5 million Jews (51%) born elsewhere moving to Israel as of 2020, according to Pew. The United States has the second-largest population of Jewish migrants at 400,000. The United Kingdom is third at 120,000.
"Top sources of Jewish migrants in Israel include former Soviet republics such as Ukraine (170,000) and Russia (150,000). Morocco is also high on the list (160,000)," Pew said in its analysis.
Jewish migrants grew from 2.3 million to 3 million from 1990 to 2020, an uptick of 28%. That represented the smallest increase among religious groups during that span, Pew said. The religiously unaffiliated (67%) and Hindus (48%) had the greatest change in that 30-year span, according to Pew.
About 50,000 Jewish migrants live in the Palestinian territories, with most of them born in Israel, according to Pew.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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