Ammon News - Higher Population Council (HPC) Secretary-General Issa Masarweh Saturday addressed the current demographic situation in Jordan, including size, structure and distribution as well as rapid population changes.

"We in Jordan started the centennial of the state with a population of just 225,000 people, reaching the first million in 1963, climbed to 5 million, according to a 2004 census, and topped 9.5 million in 2015," he told Petra journalists in an interview.

Masarweh pointed out that the waves of refugees the Kingdom witnessed and the ensuing rise in expatriate workers' numbers, placed additional demographic, environmental, social, economic and security burdens, as the number of those who do not hold the Jordanian nationality rose to about 3.5 million people, about 31 percent of the Kingdom's population.

He said the reproduction rate among refugees outstripped that of Jordanians.

Masarweh said the demographic challenge is exacerbated, mainly by the unbalanced population distribution as about 8 percent of its people live in the southern half of the Kingdom, while 92 percent are concentrated in the northwest of the Kingdom.

"This constitutes an urban flood to the detriment of agricultural and rural lands as well as environmental and natural reserves, and also negatively affects vegetation, poses a food security challenge and an additional burden on infrastructure and public services," he explained.

Masarweh pointed out that 75 percent of the Kingdom’s population live in 3 main governorates: the capital, Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa, adding that the Mafraq governorate, home to a large number of Syrian refugees, ranked fourth in 2021 and its population is expected to reach or exceed the total population of the four southern governorates.