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The Islamic Republic of Iran’s New Population Policy and Recent Changes in Fertility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marie Ladier-Fouladi
Marie Ladier-Fouladi*
Affiliation:
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)/CETOBaC (Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
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Abstract

After dropping rapidly and steadily over two decades, fertility in Iran stabilized between 2001 and 2011 at around 1.9 to 2 children per woman, before starting to rise slightly between 2012 and 2016, then falling fairly quickly. This coincided with the implementation of the Islamic Republic’s new population policy, with its aggressive and coercive measures, one of whose goals was to reverse the downwards trend in fertility. Given changes in proximate and remote determinants of fertility in Iran, and the decline in fertility since 2016, it is assumed that this new population policy triggered a reduction in intervals between births between 2012 and 2015, leading to a slight rise in the fertility of already married couples. The other latent objective of the Islamic Republic’s new population policy is to drive Iran’s population up to 150 million inhabitants in the near future. This is utopian given Iran’s demographic dynamics, but it conceals the political and ideological goal of asserting Iran’s demographic and geopolitical significance within the region, by drawing on a novel immigration policy to make up for its low fertility.

Keywords

Populationist PolicyFamily PlanningWomenFertilityContraceptiveMarriageWomen’s EducationNational IdentityIslamic Republic of Iran
Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 5-6 , December 2021 , pp. 907 - 930
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Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2021

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