Population

Population

Historically, the three cities of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour have developed to constitute the urban hub and the service centre of the Bethlehem Governorate. These three cities have a monolithic relationship that shares a rich pool of natural resources and a common socio-cultural context. The Bethlehem Governorate is one of the largest of the eleven West Bank governorates. It occupies 607.8 km2 of mass land and borders the Jerusalem Governorate in the north and the Hebron Governorate in the south. The western borders of the Bethlehem Governorate are the 1949 Armistice Line (Green Line), which was demarcated by designated United Nations (UN) resolutions.

Source: The Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ)

According to the 1997 Census carried by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the urban population in Bethlehem Governorate was 44,880 inhabitants. The population grew  to reach 58,243 in the mid of 2004 and increased to 60,123 in the mid of 2005. This indicates that the population grew by 33.96%  between these past eight years. The total population of the governorate according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in the year 2007 was projected to be 176,515 Palestinians. The same source states in “Palestine in Figures, 2011” the presence of 13 settlements that were built on Palestinian land with 16,490 Israeli settlers. Out of the total Palestinian population, 44.8% live in the rural areas and 39% in urban communities, 7.5% in refugee camps. 

The Palestinian population in general, including that of Bethlehem, is young with 46.9% aged less than 15. Fifty percent of Palestinians live in households of seven members or less. Out of the households, 91% live in crowded conditions, i.e. with more that 1 person per room.

The natural annual growth rate of the population is estimated at about 2.097% according to projections in 2011.  The Bethlehem Governorate just as the rest of the Palestinian areas, suffered an increasing drop in income during the last few years. It is estimated that for the period 1992-1996 real GNP per capita dropped by 39.4% for the West Bank and unemployment rate for the West Bank averaged 29% in mid 1996.

The area has an equal measure by churches and mosques, a symbol of the increased intermingling of the region's people. The religious and cultural diversity of the local population is further enriched by the social diversity of the urban population versus villagers and farmers of the western rural slopes, the Bedouins of the eastern desert slopes and the refugees who, since the war of 1948, live in refugee camps in the peripheries of the town of Bethlehem.

The main three cities of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala are inhabited by one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, although the size of the community has shrunk due to emigration.

Emigration has affected Palestine a lot. Due to the continuous unrest, occupation, and search for means of living the emigration drain started in the twentieth century. Bethlehem area is not different from other Palestinian areas. The first strong wave of migration took place after the First World War and mostly to Latin America. The continuous economic difficulties forced this migration to continue until today and it is reported that nearly 55% of the local Christians are currently living in the Diaspora within affluent societies. The emigration of some of the district's urban population and successful international trade with east and west at the turn of the century allowed the repatriation of riches and the construction of the beautiful homes in greater Bethlehem area. On the other hand this movement caused the loss of the young and educated elements. It is reported that 57.38% of the households in the Bethlehem District have close relatives living abroad. Most (60.3%) of the relatives abroad live in Jordan. About 32.2% of the relatives living abroad have an Israeli identity card, and 18.2% lost their ID card. The corresponding figures for the remaining West Bank are 42.5% and 15.4% respectively.

Christians constitute (28%) of the district total population and (72%) are Moslems.  (92%) of the working force in the Bethlehem district are permanent residents, while (2%) live elsewhere in the West Bank, (2%) in Jordan, (2%) in other Arab countries and 2% outside the Middle East region. Bethlehem Governorate population makes up (7.3%) of the West Bank population.

At the end of the year 2011 the PCBS projected number of Palestinians in the world to be 11.22 million, of whom 4.23 million are in the 1967 occupied Palestine, 1.37 million in Israel (1948 occupied Palestine), 4.99 million in Arab countries and around 636 thousand in other countries. However, the total fertility rate in the West Bank and Gaza has declined in 2010 to 4.2 births compared with 6 births in 1997, while it is lower in Bethlehem governorate.

.  Overall the total fertility rate (the number of children a woman will get under prevailing fertility conditions) is 4.97, and it is 5.61 for the remaining West Bank. There is evidence that fertility has started to decline in this District as in the remaining West Bank as a whole. On the average, a married Palestinian woman has 4.86 children, of which 0.31 are dead. The corresponding figures for the remaining West Bank are 4.82 and 0.30, respectively. Currently the age at first birth is 19.51 years. Of the households, about 2 1 % have no children below 1 5 living with one or both of their parents, compared to 22% in the remaining West Bank.

Having shown a steady decline in recent years, the infant mortality rate was 3 per thousand births, while the child mortality (U5MR) was 38, on average.