THE JEWISH NEWS
THIS ISSUE 6O
Population Study Finds
96,000 Detroit Area Jews
Associate Editor
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due to economic and neigh-
borhood changes.
Cohen said he, too, was
surprised when he first
learned the study revealed
that 96,000 Jews lived in the
suburban Detroit vicinity.
He and Ukeles cross-checked
their methods by using four
additional demographic
tests, which confirmed their
results. He said the figure
could be as low as 90,000 or
as high as 100,000.
As a result of the popula-
tion study, launched in
November, the Jewish com-
munity will be forced to
change the way it plans for
the future and delivers ser-
vices, Federation officials
said.
Results are being analyzed
and will be revealed in
phases throughout the year.
First phase results of the
$200,000 study show:
• 96,000 persons who con-
sidered themselves Jewish
in nearly 43,000 households.
12
009` a
esults from Detroit's
first demographic
study of the Jewish
community in almost 30
years identifies 96,000 Jews
living in the tri-county area
— a figure at least one-third
higher than officials an-
ticipated.
Governors of the Jewish
Welfare Federation and
representatives of area syn-
agogues and Jewish service
agencies expressed surprise
Tuesday when sociologists
Jack Ukeles and Steven
Cohen, who conducted the
study, unveiled preliminary
results during separate
meetings.
A random sampling last
November of 1,100
Detroiters, culled from Fed-
eration's mailing list and
telephone numbers,
extrapolates a Detroit Jew-
ish population of 96,000. The
commonly accepted figure
for the last decade has been
70,000.
The last population study,
conducted in 1963, showed
85,000 Jews living in
metropolitan Detroit. By
1972, community leaders
began assuming the popula-
tion had plummeted.
"Our thinking has been
restrained and restricted,"
said Robert Aronson, exec-
utive vice president of the
Jewish Welfare Federation
of Detroit. "We had a sense
of loss which has not been
the case."
Aronson said the commun-
ity based its recent figures
on Allied Jewish Campaign
trends and the perception of
out-migration. But Cohen
said earlier studies "gave us
the expectation for what we
found 26 years later. The
numbers were stable and
slowly increasing when we
thought it was decreasing"
NUMBER OF JEWISH HOUSEHOLDS, 1989
; 4
ALAN HITSKY
MARCH 9, 1990 / 12 ADAR 5750
SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY
..7
/
Farmington Hills
Oak Prk & Hntn Wds
Southfield
Bloomfield Twp.
West Bloomfield
Figures on each bar represent Jewish population for each city,
• Nearly 80 percent of the
community lives in 12 south
Oakland County suburbs,
with the heaviest concentra-
tions in Southfield, Oak
Park - Huntington Woods
and West Bloomfield.
Southfield, with 12,000
households, has nearly twice
the number of Jews as West
Bloomfield and the Oak
Park - Huntington Woods
area. The number of
households represents
27,600 Jewish individuals in
Southfield.
• One-fourth of the
population is school-age
children, contrary to nation-
wide expectations.
• 75 percent of the local
Jews were born here or came
to the Detroit area at least
25 years ago.
• Almost half the re-
spondents to the telephone
poll have lived in their pre-
Continued on Page 18
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