Jordan has a population of more than 11.1 million inhabitants as of 2023.^[1] Jordanians (Arabic: أردنيون) are the citizens of Jordan. Around 94% of Jordanians are Arabs, while the remaining 6% belong to other ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Chechens, Armenians and Kurds.^[2][3] Around 2.9 million inhabitants are non-citizens, a figure including refugees, legal and illegal immigrants.^[4] Jordan's annual population growth rate stands at 3.05% as of 2023, with an average birth rate of 2.8. There were 1,977,534 households in Jordan in 2015, with an average of 4.8 persons per household.^[4]

The official language is Arabic, while English is the second most widely spoken language by Jordanians. It is also widely used in commerce and government. In 2016, about 84% of Jordan's population live in urban towns and cities.^[2] Many Jordanians and people of Jordanian descent live across the world, mainly in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, United States, Canada and Turkey.^{[citation needed]}

In 2016, Jordan was named as the largest refugee hosting country per capita in the world, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon.^[5] Jordan hosts refugees mainly from the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Iraq, as well as smaller communities from other nations. There are also hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Indonesia and South Asia, who work as domestic and construction workers.

The territory of Jordan can be defined by the history of its creation after the end of World War I, the League of Nations and redrawing of the borders of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral. The ensuing decisions, most notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which created the Mandatory Palestine. In September 1922, Transjordan was formally identified as a subdivision of the Mandate Palestine after the League of Nations approved the British Transjordan memorandum which stated that the Mandate east of the Jordan River would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement west of the Jordan River.^[6]

Jordan is a home to 2,175,491 registered Palestinian refugees.^[18] Out of those 2,175,491 refugees, 634,182 have not been given Jordanian citizenship.^[19] Jordan also hosts around 1.4 million Syrian refugees who fled to the country due to the Syrian Civil War since 2011. About 31,163 Yemenis and 22,700 Libyan refugees live in Jordan as of January 2015.^[4] There are thousands of Lebanese refugees who came to Jordan when civil strife and war and the 2006 war broke out in their native country. Up to 1 million Iraqis came to Jordan following the Iraq War in 2003.^[20] In 2015, their number was 130,911. About 2,500 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in Jordan.

Bahri et al. (2011) observed that the Jordanians were consistently Arabian Semitic despite the succession of several civilizations in Jordan. They have a common origin in Mesopotamia and are not too genetically dissimilar from the peoples of the United Arab Emirates and North Africa, who respectively have a common origin in Arabia and North Africa. ^[21]

Zanetti et al. (2014) discovered significant genetic differentiation between general Jordanians and Bedouin Arabs. General Jordanians were more similar to other Middle Eastern populations whilst Bedouin Arabs were more similar to North Africans. However, the Bedouin Arabs played a significant role in the "peopling" of Jordan, both in the past and present. ^[22]

Jordan prides itself on its health services, some of the best in the region.^[24] Qualified medics, favourable investment climate and Jordan's stability have contributed to the success of this sector.^[25]

Jordan has a very advanced education system. The school education system comprises 2 years of pre-school education, 10 years of compulsory basic education, and two years of secondary academic or vocational education, after which the students sit for the General Certificate of Secondary Education Exam (Tawjihi).^[26] Scholars may attend either private or public schools.

Access to higher education is open to holders of the General Secondary Education Certificate, who can then choose between private Community Colleges, public Community Colleges or universities (public and private). The credit-hour system, which entitles students to select courses according to a study plan, is implemented at universities. The number of public universities has reached (10), besides (17) universities that are private, and (51) community colleges. Numbers of universities accompanied by significant increase in number of students enrolled to study in these universities, where the number of enrolled students in both public and private universities is estimated at nearly (236) thousand; (28) thousand out of the total are from Arab or foreign nationalities.^[27]

Source: UN World Population Prospects^[28]

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.

• Demographics of the Middle East

• Gandolfo, Luisa (24 December 2012). Palestinians in Jordan: The Politics of Identity. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78076-095-7.