Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics released statistics about the population of Jerusalem (pictured) for Jerusalem Day 2015. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – May 17 marks Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim) in Israel, a national holiday commemorating the reunification of eastern and western Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. In honor of this year’s holiday, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has released figures showing the growth and development of the Israeli capital in the last five decades, based on data collected from 2013-14.

These key findings, as translated from Hebrew, reveal both the progress that the city has made and its room for additional growth. Here are the highlights:

1. Jerusalem is currently the largest city in Israel. At the end of 2013, Jerusalem’s population was 829,900. Sixty-three percent of the city’s residents were either Jews, non-Arab Christians, members of other faiths, or those not registered as belonging to any faith in Israel’s Ministry of the Interior. Thirty-seven percent were Arabs. The population of Jerusalem also grew by 14,600 residents in 2013.

2. Among the Jews living in Jerusalem, 35 percent define themselves as haredi, 18 percent as religious, 12 percent as traditional-religious, 14 percent as traditional-not very religious, and 20 percent as secular.

3. The fertility rate (the average number of children a woman is predicted to have in her lifetime) in Jerusalem was 3.87 children per woman, which is greater than the national average of 3.03. A household in Jerusalem also had an average of 3.9 members at the time the data was collected.

4. Among the adult population of Jerusalem, 88 percent reported to be satisfied with their lives, compared to 85 percent of the population in other Israeli cities. But the rate of Jerusalem residents who felt financially poor at the time of the data’s compilation was 28 percent, the highest among Israel’s large cities.

5. Regarding education, in the 2012-13 school year, 51 percent of 12th-grade students residing in Jerusalem and studying in Hebrew schools took their matriculation exams, primarily due to the fact that 54 percent of 12th graders in Israel study under the authority of the haredi community, which sends a lower percentage of their students to take those exams than other segments of the Israeli population.

6. In the economic sector, there were 36,400 actively operating businesses in Jerusalem in 2013, which represented 7 percent of all Israeli businesses.