Jordan â A Country Burdened by the Hosting of Refugees
Jordan, an upper-middle-income Arab country, has a population of 10.7 million including 2.9 million non-citizens and refugees. While the country is resource-poor, food-deficit and has limited agricultural land, dwindling energy and water resources, it has still been successful in pursuing structural reforms in education, health and privatisation and liberalisation over the decade.
However, the country still faces major economic challenges majorly due to the social, economic and environmental burden of hosting more than 660,000 Syrian and 90,000 refugees of other nationalities registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Due to the COVID pandemic, Jordanâs unemployment rate reached 24 percent in the third quarter of 2020 â 5 percent more than that in third quarter of 2019. Talking about the economic inequality on the basis of gender, unemployment rate among men reached 21.2 percent compared to 33.6 percent among women.
Youth of Jordan, younger than 15 years of age, lives in the poorest two quintiles â which means around 400,000 children under the age of five live in families in the poorest two quintiles. Due to the uneven income inequalities spread across various groups, living conditions of people are also affected. Access to proper sanitation varies from income quintile to other as the people in poorest quintile have lower access to sewerage network and private toilets.
However, women in Jordan have better access to health and education in comparison to other developing nations. The country has one of the lowest female labour force participation rates across the globe. But, the gender gap for the women from the poorest quintile is quite high. Also, the âmarital-status gapâ in labour force participation is relatively high in Jordan.










