2008 Demographic & Needs Assessment

Study of Palm Springs

 

Sponsors:

Jewish Federation of Palm Springs and Desert Area

Principal Investigators: Yacoubian Research

Study Date: 2008

 

Key Findings

 

The Executive Summary highlights multiple key findings of the study, many of which reflect historical trends within the Palm Springs and Desert Area Jewish community -- such as the low percentage of Jewish households with young children, and the geographic movement of the community away from Palm Springs being the dominant geographic locus of Jewish life in the area.

 

Please note, however, that comparisons over time with previous studies, and with other local Jewish community studies, should be made cautiously since the 2008 study potentially included a sizeable number of households which only included persons of Jewish background and no one who defined themselves as currently Jewish.

 

Please see the Population Estimate section for details on Jewish household definitional decisions in 2008, as compared to 1998 and earlier studies.

 

Population Estimates

 

Yacoubian Research estimated that the Palm Springs and Desert Area included 11,500 Jewish households and 21,600 persons in 2008. The report noted that 7,800 of these households were "strictly Jewish" while another 3,700 included persons of Jewish background.

 

Note that the definition of Jewish household presented was much broader than the definition used in other Jewish community studies, including the 1998 study of Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley.  For the Yacoubian 2008 study, "...any household with at least one Jewish member or one Jewish parent is considered a Jewish household." [bold added by the DataBank].

 

Thus, for example, a person living alone who had a Jewish mother or father and no longer consider himself or herself to be Jewish (indeed, might have self-defined as Christian) alone was defined as a Jewish household in the Yacoubian study; a PJB (person of Jewish background) married to a non-Jew also defined the households as Jewish in the Yacoubian study.

 

In the 1998 Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley study, these households would have been defined as Jewish origin household and not as Jewish households.

 

In 1998, the Ukeles Associates estimates were 7,850 Jewish households (all had at least one self-defined Jewish adult) with a total of 15,850 people, including 13,850 currently Jewish persons (adults and children raised as Jews).

Results from the 2008 study should be interpreted within the framework of this expanded Jewish household definition.

 

Sample:

670 detailed interviews with Jewish households using paper, e-mail and telephone interviews.

 

Interviews with Jewish households from base of 2,502 screening in Palm Springs and the Desert Area via a stratified random survey administered by Yacoubian Research.

 

Sample Notes

Methodology and sampling system described in pages ii-v of the Final Report

Sample Size: 670

Language: English

 

​click here to Download Report  in pdf