The OECD’s long-term model projects that full integration of Haredi and Arab Israeli communities into the workforce could raise Israeli GDP by 8% over twenty years — equivalent to roughly $49 billion in today’s terms — with Haredi integration alone accounting for six of those percentage points.² That is not a rounding error. It is the single largest economic opportunity available to Israel today, and almost nobody in public life is taking it seriously.

Israel is the youngest developed democracy on earth, with a median age of roughly 29 against 38 in the United States and nearly 48 in Germany. In a world of ageing populations and stagnating growth, Israel holds something every developed economy wants: a vast, young workforce with decades of productive life ahead of it — the demographic dividend that powered roughly a third of East Asia’s economic miracle between 1965 and 1990.¹

That dividend is concentrated almost entirely in one community. Haredi women average 6.5 children. The Haredi share of the population is 13% today and forecast to reach 25% by 2065. Haredi children are already 19% of all first-graders. This is Israel’s greatest untapped natural resource — and it is almost entirely locked away.

The chart below makes the scale of the wave visible:........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)