Children in Israel

March 21, 2005

The Israeli city with the largest number of children is Jerusalem, which has 280,000 youngsters, or 40% of the population. Beitar Illit has the highest percentage of children among Jewish towns, 61.9%. Bnei Brak's 65,000 children comprise 47% of its population.

Some 173,000 children are being raised in one-parent families, and of these, a fifth have no siblings. Single-parent families are three times more common within new-immigrant families than in the rest of the population.

The most popular names given to Jewish girls this past year were Noa, Shira, and Maya, and Daniel, Uri, Itai, Ido, and Noam for boys. The most common pairs of names given to twins were Noam (pleasantness) and Amit (companion), Ohr (light) and Shir (song), Hod (glory) and Hadar (splendor), and Shira (song) and Hodaya (thanks).

Among Arabs, the most common name was Muhammed, given to 13.8% of the boys. The most common Arab twins' names were Muhammed and Ahmed, Muhammed and Mahmoud, and Mahmoud and Ahmed.

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