For the first time since the establishment of the state, the annual population increase over 2025 is expected to fall below one percent, according to a report released Wednesday by an independent Jerusalem-based research institute.

The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel assessed the increase as 0.9 percent. However, later figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics put the number at 1.1 percent, the joint lowest figure recorded. The reasons for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

“This is a very unusual figure,” said Prof. Alex Weinreb, the Taub Center’s director of research and an expert in demography.

Last year, the census office said that the country’s population growth dropped to 1.1 percent, from 1.6% a year earlier and 2.2% in 2022. The Taub Center report pointed out only two other years since the establishment of Israel in 1948 in which the annual population increase fell below 1.5%: 1981, when........

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