Estimating child labour in Jordan 1991-2005

This report is a moderate attempt to estimate the size of child labour in Jordan during the years 1991-2001 and to make short-range projections for the period of 2002-2005. It comes as a part of the efforts exerted by the Ministry of Labour to know the size of the problem and to prevent the spread of child labour, in view of the Ministry's realisation of the paramount role of the child. The report depends mainly on the database of the Child Labour Unit at the Ministry of Labour and annual growth of students and dropouts. Combining these two resources, the report utilises statistical estimation and prediction techniques in making these estimations and projections. The present report provides estimates and short-range projections for the size of child labour over the period 1991-2005 under three different scenarios of future trends for the number of working children. These estimates and projections are in no way an accurate provision of the future trend of child labour. They do illustrate, however, the evolution of child labour under possible -and hypothetical- scenarios of future levels of some educational variables. The report uses three scenarios (high, medium, and low) of future trends for the number of working children. According to the medium estimation, the number of working children is estimated to be about 40 thousand in 1991 and 39 thousand in 2001. The number of working children is projected to grow gradually thereafter making the projected figure to reach about 42 thousand in 2005.