ABSTRACT
The economics of U.S. Jewry is that of a small minority with a relatively short history in the country—for most somewhat over half a century. This minority is distinguished, for demographic and economic study, on the basis of answers to a direct question about religion or ethnic origin, of actions demonstrating an interest in Jewish communal or religious affairs, of absence from school by children on major Jewish holidays, of distinctively “Jewish” family names. One may summarize these bases as self-identification. Such self-identification may be pronounced and active in deeply religious or communally oriented Jews, or it may be quite passive, amounting merely to neglecting to conceal affiliation by a change of name if it is distinctly Jewish, by answering “Jewish” to a direct question, and the like. It is important to recognize that the group studied is limited, with some unavoidable errors, to Jews distinguished by these forms of self-identification; and excludes Jewish blood descendants who have not so identified themselves. The proportion of the latter may vary over time and among countries; and we shall come back to this question, in considering some implications of the recent trends in the economic structure of U.S. Jewry.
