Director's Letter
March 19, 2021
Dear Friends,
I am very pleased to share our latest 2020 US Jewish population estimates and to announce the launch of a new American Jewish Population Project website.
The AJPP, supported by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute, is a program of research designed to provide reliable data on the size and demographic characteristics of the US Jewish population. This information is essential for assessing the needs of the Jewish community and the impact of programs designed to serve American Jewry.
AJPP’s approach to understanding the Jewish population in the United States involves an innovative application of statistical techniques. Now validated by a series of studies, our work is based on the principle that estimates derived from repeated independent samples of a population provide better estimates of the true size of the population than estimates based on a single sample. AJPP synthesizes data from hundreds of independent samples of US adults—in the current study, nearly 1.4 million respondents—to produce estimates of the Jewish population in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. AJPP is also the only independent source of data to provide sociodemographic characteristics of Jewish adults for the entire United States, its states, metropolitan areas, and counties.
Using our method of data synthesis, AJPP estimates the US Jewish population at 7.6 million people, or 2.4% of the total US population. Our estimate includes: 4.9 million adults who identify their religion as Jewish, 1.2 million adults who identify as Jews of no religion, and 1.6 million Jewish children.
The new AJPP website includes new user-friendly features to explore data about the US Jewish population. Our updated interactive map includes demographic profiles of Jewish adults for states, metropolitan areas, and counties. We are now offering the option to engage us to develop custom analyses. A custom analysis was featured in our last issue of the newsletter profiling our work for the Jewish Electorate Institute to estimate the size and political orientation of the Jewish electorate in each of the 435 US congressional districts and the District of Columbia.
I welcome your comments or questions about our new population estimates or the website. As spring approaches, hope and optimism for a better future increase. We wish everyone a safe and healthy Passover.
Chag kasher v’sama’ach,
Len
Leonard Saxe, PhD
Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Social Policy
Director, Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University