newswire: 9/8/2020
- Years of high inflation, a long recession, and urbanization have all contributed to a declining annual number of births in Iran. The current fertility rate is 1.7, which is below that of other Middle Eastern countries and vastly beneath where it was thirty years ago. (Financial Times)
- NH: Back in the early postwar era, Iran had the highest total fertility rate (TFR) of any major Muslim country. Today, despite dramatic fertility declines throughout the Muslim world--it has the lowest. Therein lies an interesting story.
- Under the authoritarian leadership of Mohammad Reza Shah in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, Iran was a modernizing yet still strictly traditional agrarian nation. Parents desired many children, and thanks to rising living standards they could afford them. During those decades, Iran's TFR was well over 6--a rate seldom maintained for long by any society. And with falling child mortality, a growing share of these children were reaching adulthood. By the early 1980s, Iran's annual population growth rate exceeded 4%. At that rate, a country's population doubles in less than 20 years.
- Then came the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Shah was out, and a new theocratic regime, headed by Ayatollah Khomeini, was in. Initially, the revolutionary leadership championed Iran's high fertility and heaped scorn on western planners whose "family planning" strategies, they suspected, were a plot to weaken the Persian people. During Iran's brutal war with Iraq (1980-88), children were regarded as so plentiful that they were often used as sacrificial cannon fodder--sent out ahead, for example, as "Warriors of God" to clear Iraqi mines before the advance of Iranian troops.
- After the war, Iran's faltering economy ultimately persuaded leaders that large family size was indeed a problem and that national policy should put an end to it. Thus, in the early 1990s, Iran's official line abruptly shifted. Family planning, contraception, and sterilization services were incorporated into essential health care and were made freely available in local clinics. After receiving a fatwa from the Ayatollah endorsing family planning, the rest of the religious establishment enthusiastically followed suit. (In none of the neighboring Sunni countries could imams be so easily directed by a national leader.)
- Iran's birth rate was already declining during the Iraqi war. But with anti-natal policy now firmly in place, it continued to drop sharply through the rest of the '90s. In just twenty years, Iran's TFR sank from over 6.0 to under 2.0. When demographers look back over the last century, they often cite this as the most dramatic TFR decline of any major society in the world.
- One noteworthy result of a rapid drop in fertility is that it typically gives rise to repeated "youth bulges," separated in years by the average age of childbearing. Demographers call this Sundt's Law (after the 19th-century Norwegian demographer Eilert Sundt). The first such bulge generation came of age in the early 2000s. It furnished the large cohort of young adults who fueled the "Green Wave" (or "Persian Awakening") during the 2009 Iranian election. Another will be due to arrive in the mid- to late-2020s.
- Plummeting fertility also means rapid aging and an inexorable rise in the relative number of dependent elderly. Iran's pay-as-you-go pension system, whose very generous benefit levels (men can retire at age 60 with benefits exceeding pre-retirement pay) was only affordable in a society teeming with young people. When a reform proposal was presented to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he tabled it. Subsequent populist leaders have not expressed any interest in revisiting the issue.
- As for Iran's success in lowering its TFR, a new generation of Iranian leaders is no longer sure whether this is a blessing or a curse. Many are backtracking on the government's original enthusiasm for family planning. With Iran's population growth rate now around 1% (barely half of Israel's), they are returning to their original suspicion of "western" family planners. Calls for pronatal policies are rising. Members of Parliament are suggesting subsidies for parents. Deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, last year declared that members of his elite force should have at least five children.
- But even if vigorous pronatalist policies were introduced, would they make any difference? Or is it already too late?
- Over the last thirty years, as the FT story points out, the impact of family planning has been reinforced by growing urbanization and rising levels of female education (which now exceed that of most other Mideast nations). Over the last five years, more importantly, Iran's economy--never that healthy to begin with due to rampant state-sponsored corruption--has been shattered by declining energy prices and the Trump sanctions.
- In the words of one young woman living with her family, "The economic situation won’t improve early enough for us to think of love and kids. I have come to terms with living a single life and have lost hopes that one day I can have my own family.” Or to quote a 30-year-old entrepreneur, “I’ll have kids only if my husband and I leave Iran. There is no promising future to encourage me to have children in this country.”
