NJPS Home ---> NJPS Report ---> Demography --->

Marriage and Fertility	-Download NJPS Report PDF -Download PowerPoint Summary
More than half of Jewish adults (57%) are currently married, while 9% are divorced, 8% are widowed, and 1% are separated. The remaining 25% are single and have never been married.

American Jews, both men and women, tend to marry later than Americans generally (see Table 3). In every age group under 65, proportionally fewer Jews than all Americans have ever married, with the largest gap being among those age 25-34. Only among those 65 and over do more or equal proportions of Jews report having been married than the general U.S. population. High educational levels and concentration in high status jobs among Jews provide a partial explanation for their delayed marriage and family formation.

At all ages, fertility among Jewish women is lower than fertility for all U.S. women, whether gauged by the percent who are childless or the average number of children ever born (see Table 4). While both women and men make decisions regarding childbearing, this report follows the standard scientific practice of only referring to women when analyzing fertility. The fertility gap between Jewish and all U.S. women narrows but is not eliminated in later childbearing age groups, indicating that Jewish women delay having children until later years, and then come close to, but do not match, fertility levels of all U.S. women.

 Substantial majorities of both Jewish and all U.S. women under the age of 25 remain childless.  Majorities of Jewish women age 25-29 and 30-34 have still not had a child, while less than half of all U.S. women in these age groups are childless.  It is not until age 35-39 that less than half of Jewish women remain childless, compared to a fifth of all U.S. women.  By age 40-44, usually considered the last childbearing age group, the gap narrows but is not completely closed, with just over a quarter of Jewish women remaining childless compared to less than a fifth of all U.S. women.

A similar pattern is evident for the average number of children ever born. In all childbearing age groups, Jewish women have given birth to fewer children than U.S. women. The absolute gap between Jewish and U.S. women widens through age 30-34, at which point Jewish women on average have given birth to 1.04 children and U.S. women generally have had 1.56. The gap declines slightly in the 35-39 year age group, and then closes significantly in the 40-44 year age group, with Jewish women having on average 1.86 children and U.S. women generally having just slightly more, 1.93 children.

Differences in fertility between Jewish and all U.S. women are negligible when examining women who have had at least some college education (see Table 5).  Accounting for education is instructive because educational attainment has a significant influence on fertility, and Jewish women have relatively high educational levels. By age 40-44, Jewish women who have been to college have nearly identical numbers of children as all U.S. women at the same educational levels. In other words, these results suggest that with respect to fertility, Jewish women are acting very much like their educational counterparts in the larger society. Because proportionally more Jewish than U.S. women have attained higher education, the connection between education and fertility disproportionately affects the Jewish population.

While Jewish fertility approaches general fertility levels in later childbearing ages, overall Jewish fertility is too low to replace the Jewish population. NJPS data point to an average number of children born to Jewish women of less than 1.9. Demographers generally regard 2.1 as the average necessary for population stability. Moreover, a sizeable fraction of children raised by Jewish women and men in interfaith homes are not raised as Jews. Consequently, the "effective Jewish birthrate" is below 1.9 children per Jewish woman. Current Jewish fertility will contribute over time to a declining Jewish population, if other sources of population growth such as immigration do not compensate for it.

Adoption* is another path to raising children. Among Jewish households with children, just over 5% report an adopted child resides in the home, accounting for approximately 35,000 children in total. [2] In a strong majority of cases, just one child is reported as adopted, and in two-thirds of single-adoption households, the adopted child is the only child in the household. While adoption clearly addresses the desire of thousands of Jewish parents to raise children, NJPS data indicate that it has not significantly augmented the Jewish population or counterbalanced low fertility rates.

*Topics with asterisks refer to respondents who answered the survey's long form, representing a population of 4.3 million Jewish adults and children.

[2] Adoption was asked only of female respondents. Total estimates and proportions reported here assume answers of male respondents about adoption in their households would have been statistically the same.

Next page: Geography: Regional Residence and Mobility