The role of social policies in empowering youth: a case study of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

     The current study mainly aims to scrutinize the role of public policies in empowering Jordanian youth and the efforts of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in achieving it. Accordingly, the study started from a research question: What is the role of social policies in the process of empowering youth in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and what are the obstacles to empowering them, and has the Kingdom of Jordan empowered youth by focusing and paying attention to social policies? The study employed the descriptive analytical approach, in addition to using the case study approach, which is to identify the role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in using social policies to empower Jordanian youth. The findings of the study showed that social policies have an important role to empower youth in Jordan, where the Kingdom has achieved a number of successes at the level of education. However, there are some obstacles in the social policies presented by the Kingdom at the level of community participation, the standard of living, providing job opportunities for youth, and health care. Most important obstacles in empowering Jordanian youth with regard to social policies were: the low standard of living, the high unemployment rate, the increase in secondary education expenses, and the lack of comprehensive health care of youth, especially in the pre-graduation stage. The study recommended: the necessity of providing soft loans to young people as social assistance, establishing an unemployment insurance fund, providing job opportunities for youth, providing financial support to students during study periods in proportion to the standard of living of the family and youth below the poverty line, linking education outputs to work requirements, and interesting in health care for youth, especially chronic diseases, which helps them empowerment in various fields.