Jews most educated – but not in SA: new Pew study

ANT KATZ, with Pew Centre and JTA

Jews are the world’s most-educated religious group, with an average of more than 13 years of formal schooling, while the global average is less than eight, says a new Pew Research Centre study published today. However, says the study, South African Jewry gets the dunce cap.

The least educated Jewish population globally is in South Africa, says the Pew Centre study, where Jews have an average of 12 years of schooling, and only 29 percent have higher education. This, however, compares highly to the rest of SA where, the study found, only three percent of the population have higher education.

RIGHT: One of the most astounding figures to materialise from the Pew Centre’s new ‘Religion and Education Around the World’ study is the extent to which Jewish women have surpassed men in schooling over three generations. This may be partly due to an increasing number of young men who study Torah.

Jews led the field in almost every other category as well. Jewish men and women have the smallest average gap in years of formal schooling at zero (Hindu women, on the other extreme, trail men by 2.7 years).

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More staggering statistics

Jews were the most educated in the 55-to-74 age group. Sixty-one percent of Jews have at least some post-high school education; the global average is 14 percent. Ninety-nine percent of Jews have had some formal schooling.

Both South Africa and Israel were included in the study.

Among Jews worldwide aged 25 to 34, women are more educated than men. Jewish women in that age group have more than 14 years of formal schooling on average, and nearly 70 percent have attended some form of higher education. Jewish men in that cohort, by contrast, have an average of 13.4 years of formal schooling, and 57 percent have had higher education.

For the study, Pew’s researchers divided the world into six regions. It includes data from 35 countries in the Asia-Pacific region; 36 countries in Europe, including Russia; 30 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Central America and Mexico; 12 countries in the Middle East-North Africa region (including Israel); Canada and the United States in North America; and 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (including South Africa).

LEFT: Students at the North Cheshire Jewish Primary School in Stockport, England (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

While 81 percent of American Jewish men aged 55 to 74 has had higher education, the number drops to 65 percent among those aged 25 to 34. Pew attributes the decline to the growth of America’s Orthodox Jewish population, which attains formal secular education at lower rates than non-Orthodox Jews. The study shows that the group with the highest rate of higher education worldwide are American Jews who boast a 75 percent average – compared to 40 percent of Americans generally.

American Jewry has an average of 14.7 years of schooling, while Israeli Jewry only have an average of 12 years of schooling, and 46 percent have had higher education. Again, the ultra-Orthodox factor may play into these figures.

Jews in Israel have far more education, on average, than Muslim Israelis, though the gap is narrowing. Among the oldest Jews and Muslims, there is a nearly six-year gap in formal schooling. Among Jews and Muslims aged 25 to 34, however, the gap shrinks to 3.7 years.

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• Read Pew’s RELIGION AND EDUCATION AROUND THE WORLD

RIGHT: Among the world’s major religions, Jews hold pride of place and enjoy a considerable lead on years of education than their peers of other faiths.

In the youngest generation of three faith groups – Jews, Christians and the religiously unaffiliated – the gender gap in higher education has actually reversed. The biggest reversal has happened among Jews. Among the oldest generation of Jews, more men (66%) than women (59%) hold post-secondary degrees. But among the youngest Jewish adults worldwide, 69% of women and 57% of men have such degrees. In other words, a 7-point gender gap in the oldest generation (with more men than women holding advanced degrees) is now a 12-point gender gap in the other direction, with more women than men in the youngest generation of Jews holding degrees.