Family Planning

Garrett Nada             Iran has a numbers problem. Over the past 35 years, Tehran’s family planning policy has gyrated so radically—from encouraging too many babies to producing too few—that the Islamic Republic faces existential economic dangers.        The origin of the problem dates to the…
            Iran’s low fertility rate has produced a rapidly aging population, according to a new U.N. report. The rate has declined from 2.2 births per woman in 2000 to 1.6 in 2012. This has pushed the median age of Iranians to 27.1 years in 2010, up from 20.8 years in 2000. The median age could…
Farzaneh Roudi         Iran has reversed its population policy and cut back an innovative program to bring down fertility rates that almost doubled the population two decades after the revolution. Alarmed by a rapidly aging population, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now calling on…