ENUMERATING BRITAIN’S JEWISH POPULATION: REASSESSING THE 2001 CENSUS IN THE CONTEXT OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF INDIRECT ESTIMATES

Abstract

The 2001 census count of Britain’s Jewish population is placed in the context of over a century of work estimating this group’s size. It is argued that the published census figure of 267,000 was surprisingly low given the long term trend indicated by this work. Therefore, other data from both the 2001 census and appropriate communal sources are used to derive an adjusted figure of about 301,000. It is argued that this is a more accurate representation of the size of Britain’s Jewish population in 2001. The implications of this figure are that the demographic decline, charted in Britain since the 1960s, appears to have abated with the most likely underlying cause being the rapid demographic growth exhibited by Britain’s haredi (strictly Orthodox) population since the 1970s.