After experiencing a period of fast population growth from 2000 to 2020, increasing the population by over 5 million people, the Jordan population is expected to continue growing. The population is expected to peak at 14.15 million people in 2080, after which it will begin to decline slowly, ending the 21st century with 13.69 million people.
Between 2000 and 2020, Jordan grew at rates between 1.37% and 5.00%. The current population growth rate is 1.00%, adding about 101,000 people to the population from 2019 to 2020. Jordan has positive net migration and a fertility rate of 2.77 births per woman, which is above the population replacement rate of 2.1 births.
With fertility rates gradually decreasing, the population growth rate is decreasing as well. This will lead to Jordan’s population plateau and eventual decline when the death rates begin exceeding the birth rates.
Jordan Population Growth
Today, the 95-97% of Jordanians are Arabs, but there are many other ethnic groups in Jordan. There are about 500,000 Iraqis, and over 500,000 Syrian refugees have moved to Jordan to escape violence in the last two years. Assyrian Christians make up 0.8% of the population, most of whom are Eastern Aramaic speaking refugees. Here are 30,000 Kurds, most of which are refugees from Turkey, Iran and Iraq, and about 5,000 Armenians. Jews were once prevalent in the country but now number just 300.
Jordan Population Projections
The dramatic population shifts and massive influxes of immigrants are expected to stabilize, and even slow, in the years to come. The annual growth rate as of 2019 was 1.68%. Predictions say that this rate will peak in 2020 around 2.2% before slowing down towards 1% annually in 2050. It may seem as though this decrease wouldn't be desirable, but it is much more stable than the volatility of the past. The same projections say that the population of Jordan will be 10,208,662 in 2020, 11,122,063 in 2030, 12,679,815 in 2040, and 14,187,734 in 2050.