Kiryas Joel (Yiddish: קרית יואל, romanized: Kiryas Yoyel, Yiddish pronunciation: [ˈkɪr.jəs ˈjɔɪ.əl] ; often locally abbreviated as KJ) is a village coterminous with the Town of Palm Tree in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 32,954 at the 2020 census, approximately 5% of the estimated 712,000 population of the Kiryas Joel–Poughkeepsie–Newburgh metropolitan area. The vast majority of its residents are Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews who belong to the worldwide Satmar sect of Hasidism.
According to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, Kiryas Joel has by far the youngest median age population of any municipality in the United States, and the youngest, at 11.4 years old, of any population center of over 5,000 residents in the United States. Residents of Kiryas Joel, like those of other Haredi and Orthodox Jewish communities, typically have high birth rates, and this has driven rapid population growth. According to 2020 census figures, the village has a high poverty rate with about 40% of the residents living below the federal poverty line. It is also the place in the United States with the highest percentage of people who reported Hungarian ancestry, as 18.9% of the population reported Hungarian descent in 2000.
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