The Jewish "Demographic Miracle" in Nineteenth-Century Europe Fact or Fiction?

Abstract

. According to many prominent historians of the Jewish people, during the nineteenth century the Jewish population in western and eastern Europe increased about twice as fast as the non-Jewish population (the Jewish "demographic miracle"). It was supposed that lower Jewish child mortality was the main cause for the difference. The authors calculate nineteenth-century increases in Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Netherlands, the Polish province of Posen, and Germany. The differences between the increases in the Jewish and non-Jewish populations were far less than those suggested in the literature. The real explanation of the apparent abnormally high Jewish growth rates is that scholars underestimated the total Jewish population at the beginning of the nineteenth century, not that Jews experienced lower child mortality rates. Thus, the authors conclude that there was no Jewish demographic miracle.