[Iran's] population growth hit 4.4 percent in the early 1980’s, close to the biological maximum and one of the highest ever recorded. … In scarcely a decade, Iran reduced its population growth from the world’s highest … to just over 1 percent.
How did they do it and what can we learn from them?
I’m reading Lester R. Brown’s 2004 book Outgrowing the Earth. (See here for book details.) All the quotes and data in this post are, except where noted, from that book near the end of chapter two.
background
The Shah introduced family planning in 1967, but Ayatollah Khomeini who took power in 1979 not only dismantled it but encouraged large families, at least in part to produce soldiers. (The Iran-Iraq war raged from 1980 to 1988.)
Then:
In the 1990’s the country’s leadership had crossed a threshold, recognizing that their record population growth was burdening the economy, destroying the environment, and overwhelming schools. … Overnight they launched a new program that quickly became one of the most comprehensive efforts to slow population growth ever adopted in any country.
what they did
- “The government … mobilized the ministries of education and culture to help convince the public of the need to shift to smaller families and to slow population growth.”
- Iran Broadcasting released “a steady drumbeat of information encouraging smaller families and extolling their benefits” and informed people that 15,000 new “health houses” were available to provide family planning guidance and services.
- Religious leaders were mobilized to convince couples to have smaller families.
- The national female literacy rate reached 70% in 2004 from 25% in 1970.
And a comprehensive family planning program:
- All contraceptives are free of charge, including the pill.
- Iran became the first Muslim country to offer male sterilization.
- Couples must take a two-day course in family planning and contraception in order to get a marriage license. (Probably the first and only country to do this.)
“Average family size has dropped from seven children to less than three.” Only two other countries, China and Japan, have managed to halve their population growth rate in as short a period of time.
keys to a stable population
In the final section of chapter two, Brown says the key factors to stabilizing population are:
- universal elementary-school education (especially for girls since their schooling has lagged behind boys in nearly all developing countries)
- basic health care (village-level care of the most rudimentary kind)
- access to family planning
- school lunch programs for the poorest of the poor (an incentive to go to school and a way to enhance learning; the chronically hungry don’t learn)
another look
Iran’s Family Planning Program: Responding to a Nation’s Needs by Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi from June 2002 and prepared with the help of Iranian officials is another great source.
Roudi-Fahimi notes:
- In 1993, the legislature passed a family planning bill. The law
- removed most of the economic incentives for large families. For example, some allowances to large families were cancelled, and some social benefits for children were provided for only a couple’s first three children.
- gave special attention to such goals as reducing infant mortality, promoting women’s education and employment, and extending social security and retirement benefits to all parents so that they would not be motivated to have many children as a source of old age security and support.
- The rate of secondary school enrollment has more than doubled for girls, from 36 percent in the mid-1980s to 72 percent in the mid-1990s, while boys’ enrollments have increased from 73 percent to 81 percent over the same time span. In 2000, more women than men entered universities. The longer women stay in school, the higher the standard of living they want for themselves and their families. The quality of children’s lives also becomes more important.
- The first official target of the revitalized family planning program, as reflected in the government’s first five-year development plan, was to reduce the total fertility rate to 4.0 births per woman by 2011. By 2000, the rate was already down to half the stated goal, at 2.0 births per woman.
my own mutterings
To the best of my ability the above is straight reporting from two sources. Here are my own thoughts:
Some developing nations have the means to take Iran’s approach of using the planning and power of a strong government to make a quick, meaningful change in population growth. Whatever you think of Iran’s government, in this case they implemented their program without draconian measures like China’s one-child policy. In fact, the specific steps they took are widely recognized as compassionate, effective means of slowing growth and have positive side effects like a better educated, healthier citizenry.
Immensely wealthy countries like the United States have both a moral responsibility and national security reasons to support such efforts. Yet as one writer notes the current Bush administration has
- appointed a veterinarian as the director of the Office of Women’s Health
- appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”
- brought back Reagan’s much-maligned “gag” rule, which prohibits healthcare providers abroad from receiving US funding, even if they spend their own money in counseling women about abortion or in providing abortion services.
- defunded the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which works in over 140 countries supporting maternal-health and family-planning programs, as well as fighting HIV/AIDS and violence against women.
Experts indicate that $34 million in family planning funding is enough to prevent 2 million unwanted pregnancies, nearly 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths; almost 60,000 maternal illnesses and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths.
Maybe we can shame the war hawks into giving up less than the cost of a single military aircraft in order to show we can be as intelligent and compassionate in our support of international family planning as Iran is internally with its own.
So maybe it was an easy starting point to reduce from.
Given that the Iran-Iraq war was killing lots of their people I would have thought that an end to the killing would have made it technically possible to go higher. And of course with immigration there is no significant biological barrier for population growth within a nation.
Australia over the last few years has been undergoing a baby boom. I helped make three of them.
Newsflash – Islamic fundamentalist government seeks to control women’s fertility.
I can’t believe a feminist can support any government foray into a woman’s reproductive lives.
Even in Australia the state is getting involved in the business of baby making, they believe they’re aren’t enough Australians in the world.
So Terje, did you collect your baby bonus from Papa John?
Paternalism sucks, be it from liberal democratic or Islamic fundamentalist regimes.
Brendan – Only for the last bub I think. I can’t really recall, I’m not the CFO.
Trinifar,
That’s a very interesting article. But you know: denial is a very strong emotion.
So long as the human female was created with the ability to produce as many as twenty children in a life-time.
You know.
Brendan, you seem not to have read the post. The whole point is the government made services and information available. It was not “a foray into a woman’s reproductive lives.”
In support of Magne’s comment, maybe this is a good time to reiterate that what I’d like to see on this blog is quality discussion. I don’t mind if anyone denies the truth or practicality what I write about or takes a different position. The exchange of different views is the main point of having a blog. But do try to say something meaningful.
Where’s that vaunted rationality and reason libertarians are always talking about?
I may have missed some detail, but it looks like most of the measures Iran instituted were empowering and supportive of women and, as Trinifar said, simply provided services and information. It appears to be good confirmation of the observation that supporting women in the areas of education and health care is key to reducing fertility rates, and that it can definitely be done without draconian measures or even modestly coercive measures.
I could be wrong but I thought most resistance to using contraceptives in most countries relates more to cultural attitudes and legal restrictions than the financial burden associated with buying them.
Did they prohibit it previously?
Do you recommend we emulate or promote this? What is your view of sex outside of marriage. How has a country like Australia achieve a low reproductive rate (until the last few years) without such measures?
The political elites of the entire western world can’t bring themselves to talk to any of their Iranian counterparts, but brand the Iranian regime as “terrorist”, “fundamentalist”, “dictatorial”, and what have you. These are all facts. However: the fact that the western public has been taught to fear and loath the Iranian regime, doesn’t necessarily mean that everything they’re doing is wrong.
I’m not going to make too many claims about the political situation in Iran. But there can be no doubt that Saudi Arabia’s social / political record in terms of women’s rights, among other things, are far more nauseating than what is known about Iran. The difference is: Saudi Arabia is a NATO ally. And Iran isn’t.
Keeping things on topic here (not to talk about the fact that Iran is the one and only oil-rich country that is even thinking about development of alternative sources of energy)
Oooh.
Personally I think that we should talk to terrorists, fundamentalists and dictators. In fact I think it is negligent not to.
I guess it is all about context, isn’t it?
Iran is not a democracy and its citizens do not have the same freedoms and rights as Americans or Australians. When the government mobilizes religious leaders to spread the state gospel and offers free male sterilization, I get slightly suspicious that Iranians are not having their liberty enhanced by such programs.
If religious leaders want to freely offer birth control advice to willing listeners, no problem.
If charities want to offer free birth control and sterilization surgery, no problem.
But when a government with no history of respect for its own citizens starts making counciling compulsory I am very skeptical of both their motive and their methods.
Do you recommend we emulate or promote [actions like Iran's]?
Yes, in those countries where population growth is at unstainable levels. The USA, the EU, Canada, Australia, Russia, and Japan all have low growth rates. The Middle East, most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America do not. We should promote Iran’s family planning methods in those regions out of compassion and our own self interest.
See the sections on the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Nigeria in this post and this follow up to get a sense of the problem.
Did they prohibit [male sterilization] previously?
Apparently.
What is your view of sex outside of marriage.
Seems like a lot of married people enjoy it.
But seriously I agree with a view I think you expressed at ALS: the government should get out of the marriage business altogether. Still, the reality is, in the countries where population growth is an immediate problem, hell will freeze before that happens.
My view on sex is do no harm and learn to be a skillful lover. I don’t care how often or with what combination of partners someone has sex, married or unmarried. It’s all about personal freedom and mutual consent.
How has a country like Australia achieve a low reproductive rate (until the last few years) without such measures [like Iran's]?
As noted in the post, when women have more education they want a higher standard of living for themselves and their children. I would add when they have equal rights and equal job opportunities as men, they have more of a say in reproductive choices. These conditions are more the case in “developed” countries than the “developing” ones.
Which is one good reason to be in favour of economic growth.
It is not merely about women being more educated either. It is also about the fact that in nations with poorly developed financial systems children offer a form of security in old age. So there is an incentive to have a lot of them. I agree though that womens education plays a big part in the equation.
Brendan is right to make an issue of womens rights in Iran. They are not good:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Iran#Gender_Issues
If you want to find a benchmark for good practice in reducing fertility then I think you can find a better benchmark than Iran. Otherwise you leave yourself open to the perception that we should reduce fertility without regard to other important social issues. And whilst I don’t have a very high regard for the Bush administration on foreign policy I’d avoid suggesting that reproductive rates in foreign lands are significantly effected by the attitude of the US president.
Iran’s family planning program has worked wonderfully. This happened with draconian measures and without significant improvement (if any) in the economy. In fact the unemployment is very high in the under 25 group of young people; reducing population growth helps mitigate that.
Women have gained rights and more control of their bodies as a result.
With respect to GWB’s attitudes, apparently you have not read the whole post. The US used to contribute to family planning services in other countries in acknowledgement of the problem of population pressure. GWB has backed away from this purely because of his extreme stance on abortion.
I have read the entire post. And I stand by my statement that the attitude of GWB is not a significant factor. To make it clear let me say it as follows. I don’t think US funded family planning services are a big factor in population growth rates. Either before or after the changes to funding made by GWB.
Some apparent contradictions that you might clear up.
ON MARRIAGE.
1. You think that a 2 day government funded training session on family planing before granting a marriage licence is a good idea and should be encouraged.
2. You agree with me that governments should get out of the marriage business entirely.
ON LIVING STANDARDS.
1. You think educated women want a higher standard of living for themselves and their children (we will skip over the inference that uneducated women don’t want this) and this is a good thing.
2. You think the quest for higher living standards is detroying the planet and is a bad thing.
I just posted a link to a newspaper article on GIM. I think it belongs on your blog as well.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036598,00.html
Quote:
“There remains a fourth barrier to raising the population issue: even when people acknowledge the problem and brave the debate, it seems too big to solve. But there are things that can be done at least to reduce population growth. Last week the UN Population Fund said its latest projections ‘underline the urgency of family planning needs’. It says 200 million women in the world don’t have access to ’safe and effective’ contraceptive services, and calls for a big increase in funding for family planning, especially in developing nations. Britain’s Optimum Population Trust also calls for 45 countries to drop policies to increase birthrates – mostly because of worries about paying pensions for an aging population.
Is this enough to tackle such a big issue? Even with the most optimistic assumptions about falling birth rates, the UN forecasts a population increase to 7.8 billion by 2050. But that is still considerably less than a population of 9.2 billion. And the OPT says the success of campaigns in countries such as Iran and Thailand suggests the best family planning services, especially combined with women’s education and human rights, could go even further.”
Terje,
(reply to your comment #16)
ON MARRIAGE.
On believe in pragmatic solutions that work in the local culture. In developed countries the government role in marriage is superfluous and in the USA downright invasive. Iran has a very different history, culture, and delevopment status.
The virture of the 2-day training their probably lies getting information about contraception as a viable option and the country’s problem of growth to people who are about to start families and may well have had no access to that information before.
I’m interested in compassionate family planning solutions that work in the local culture. Iran went for spreading information and providing free contraception.
ON LIVING STANDARDS.
Same issues. In the USA it is not unusual for a family of 4 to have 5 cars (two of which are SUV’s), a boat for water skiing, a snowmobile, a couple of motorcycles, an ATV, a riding lawnmower, a jet ski or two, and annual vacations in Colorado in the winter for snow skiing and Europe in the summer. That’s the sort of living standard which can not be matched by everyone on the planet in our current numbers without permanent negative consequences.
In Iran, which has a per capita income of about $1,600 compared to $37,000 in the US, an educated woman wanting a higher standard of living for her children than she is currently experiencing is an entirely different thing.
Magne,
That’s a great article for its mere existence besides the information it contains. In addition to the part you quote, there’s this:
And this:
So we should have free markets, low taxes and secure property rights in the rest of the world to promote higher living standards and socialism in America to promote a reduction in the level of prosperity.
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Although what has been practice by Iran country may sound brutal, but who can blame them. I believe Indonesia and China should the same as well.
Thank God that my country is not over populated. However, it is sad to see that some other countries are migrating to my country and create lots of havoc.
[...] Philippines might look at what Iran did to drastically reduce its high population growth rate — but Iran was able to get its religion leaders to back its policies, something that’s not [...]
[...] population. While it is possible to reduce high population growth rates quickly and humanely (see here for example), we have no example of a fast decline in absolute population numbers — and [...]
[...] providing family planning information and contraception services to everyone as discussed here and here. Another part is getting religious leaders to help which is addressed in that second link and also [...]