Behind the Numbers: The PRB blog on population, health, and the environment

by Farzaneh (Nazy) Roudi, program director, Middle East and North Africa

Iran stands out for lowering its fertility in a short time without coercion or abortion. The total fertility rate dropped from 6.6 births per woman in 1977 to 2.0 births per woman in 2000, and to 1.9 births per woman in 2006. The decline has been particularly impressive in rural areas where the average number of births per woman in one generation dropped from 8.1 births per woman to 2.1 births per woman. 

But now President Ahmadinejad wants to reverse this demographic trend and boost population growth by offering families a financial incentive to have more children. Will he succeed? I don’t think so. Here’s why:

1. Today, Iranians’ decision on whether to bring a child into this world is more complicated than just involving a bit of financial incentive. Under this new plan each child born in the current Iranian year, which began March 21, will receive a $950 deposit in a government bank account. They will then continue to receive $95 every year until they reach 18. Parents will also be expected to pay matching funds into the accounts. Then, children can withdraw the money at the age of 20 and use it for education, marriage, health and housing. But Iranian parents, with their daily economic struggle to make the ends meet, know that this amount is not going to go far. This reminds me of when I was in Iran about 10 years ago, a few months after Dr. Marandi, former Iranian minister of health, received UNFPA’s annual award for his contribution to improving maternal and child health in Iran. When I told relatives and friends about Dr. Marandi’s award and the drop in fertility, they all had a similar reaction. They would laughingly say, “Why did HE receive the award? You only need to go to a grocery store and check prices and you can see for yourself why families don’t want to have more children.” And today, prices are even higher than 10 years ago.
2. While my friends and relatives made a legitimate point about economic hardships Iranian families were going through, one could not deny the government’s success in expanding its basic health care uniformly and universally. The Iranian constitution stipulates that the government is responsible for providing basic health care (which includes family planning services) and education to all its citizens for free. One would expect that family planning services will remain as part of basic health care package.
3. Most modern methods of family planning are produced in the country, making Iran pretty much self-sufficient. For example, the only condom factory in the region is in Iran which exports condoms to other countries in the region and Eastern Europe. And since private businesses are involved in the production of contraceptives, one would expect them to continue their operations and to promote their sales.
4. Iranian women and men have gotten used to exercising their reproductive rights and would expect to be able to continue to do so. Today, 74 percent of married women ages 15 to 49 practice family planning; 60 percent use a modern method; one-third of the modern contraceptive users have relied on permanent method—female or male sterilization.
5. Iranian families have learned to value quality of children over quantity of children. Small family size—one child or two children—is now the norm. In today’s Iran, three children is considered a large family. This reminds me of the reaction of my Egyptian colleague (a medical doctor working in population and reproductive health) with whom I traveled with to Iran. She said that something has happened to the Iranian psyche that has not yet happened in Egypt—Egyptians also have universal access to family planning services, but their fertility has plateaued at around 3 births per woman for about a decade.  

Iranians have been progressive in reproductive rights. Iranian women live a modern lifestyle that is often not seen in Western media that show women covered head to toe in black, as if they belong to centuries ago. Elementary school enrollment is universal; the gender gap in secondary school enrollment is almost closed; and more girls are enrolled in universities than boys. And more important, the educational system is modern and only a very small percentage of students attend religious schools—contrary to what is happening in some neighboring countries. In short, Ahmadinejad’s argument—rejecting family planning as a Western and secular plot – is not going to be bought by Iranians. Despite continued international economic sanctions and political isolations, secular ideas are pouring into the country through satellite TVs and the Internet. Iranians have the second-highest rate of Internet use in the Middle East and North Africa region, after the United Arab Emirates.  

While I don’t see much reason for Ahmadinejad’s new policy to influence country’s overall fertility, the crude birth rate in Iran is going to increase for a decade or so, as the baby boomers go through their childbearing years. So one should not rush to judgment and attribute future increases in the number of births to the success of Ahmadinejad’s policy. Today, a significant portion of Iran’s population are in their 20s and early 30s (prime ages to marry and have children), born during the high-fertility era around the 1979 Islamic revolution and 1980s. 

Yes, Iran is facing an aging population and the country needs to prepare for it. This may well be in the mind of Ahmadinejad as he encourages women to have more children. But one may also see other motives: boosting his image as a populist; trying to psychologically calm people about current economic crisis in the country; and trying to push women back to stay home, raising children and not participating in public life. Iranian women who have achieved their reproductive rights are at the forefront of democracy movement in Iran, demanding more rights.  Will Ahmadinejad be able to change all this by throwing money at people? No, I don’t think so.

by Carl Haub, senior demographer

There is a good bit of evidence that hard economic times cause people to delay having a child or not have one altogether, circumstantial as that evidence might be. In the United States, there were two notable 20^th Century baby “busts,” one during the Great Depression that bottomed out at a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 children per woman in 1936 and another during the inflationary “oil shock” decade of the 1970s when the TFR set an all-time low record of 1.7 that still stands. In Sweden, rather wild swings in the TFR seem to follow trends in employment and in Eastern Europe, the bottom fell out of the TFR as the breakup of the Soviet bloc destroyed economies.  

Source: National Center for Health Statistics (click to view full size).

So, will it happen this time? In the 1970s, there were quite a few things going on which makes a direct connection between the economy and TFR decline a bit murky. The TFR had been dropping rapidly since the late 1960s, possibly connected with the feminist movement as women looked to careers beyond the traditional nurse, teacher, and secretary. And Roe vs. Wade, which confirmed the legality of abortion on demand, passed in a number of states in Jan., 1973. The Depression decline might seem more clear, but the TFR had been falling throughout the Roaring Twenties.

Perhaps the current period will provide a better laboratory. The TFR has been relatively steady at 2.0 to 2.1 for about a decade and there have been no major events such as Roe vs. Wade. Unemployment is rising and the airwaves flood our living rooms and cars with one bit of scary news after another. Bad news travels fast and furiously these days, much more so than in the 1970s and 1930s.

For more, see articles from The Chicago Tribune, American Public Media’s Marketplace, and the Psychology Today blog.