The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the only institution of higher education in Israel where the study of population has been undertaken at an advanced academic level, and where the research conducted has been recognized worldwide. A recent article in the leading journal Demography ranks various institutions in terms of their contributions to published demographic literature, and places Hebrew University in the top twenty-five institutions world-wide. Most impressive, Hebrew University was the only non-American institution that contributed significantly.
The Department of Population Studies at the Hebrew University succeeds the Department of Demography, which was established in 1971. The primary goals of the Department are to accommodate increasingly multidisciplinary approaches to the field of demography, as well as to encourage research in the traditional fields of formal demography. Multidisciplinary approaches encompass both teaching and research activities. In addition to the core Demography faculty members, other affiliates associated with the Dept. of Population Studies include Hebrew University faculty members in related departments whose teaching and research interests are closely linked to population studies.
The Dept. of Population Studies offers several degree programs at the Masters and Doctorate level, including Degrees in Population Studies, as well as several joint degree programs with the School of Public Health, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Department of Statistics. Required courses offered by the department include introduction to population and demography, the population of Israel, models and population structure, fertility and marriage, mortality and morbidity, migration, reading seminars and applied statistical methods. Elective courses include economic demography, historical demography, demography of the Middle East, population and development, as well as family planning and reproductive health. In addition, other courses in related fields, such as Public Health, Sociology, Statistics, Economics, Geography, Urban Studies, and Contemporary Jewry can be studied as part of the various degree programs.