In 2011, the United Nations Population Division published its World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision. In this report, the Iranian TFR was estimated to have fallen from 1.96 in 2000-2005 to 1.59 in 2010-2015. It was then projected to fall by 2025-2030 to 1.34 in the medium variant projection and to an extraordinarily low 0.84 in the low variant projection. These numbers raised major concern in parts of the Iranian Government. To avert the potential of a future disastrous population decline, a pronatalist bill was drafted for consideration by the Iranian parliament. The draft law, among numerous other provisions, called for restrictions on the employment of women and young single people and encouragements for women to marry in their late teens. Our objective is to measure the trend in fertility in Iran especially from 2000 onwards. Using the 2010 Iran Demographic and Health Survey, the synthetic cohort parity progression ratio method is used to measure the trend in fertility in Iran. Synthetic parity progressions are compared with real cohort parity progresses to examine the presence of tempo effects. Comparison is made with age-based measures of total fertility from the DHS, the 2006 and 2011 Censuses and the birth registration system.
The paper demonstrates that fertility in Iran has been constant for the past decade at a level of 1.9-2.0 births per woman. It also shows that there is little evidence of tempo effects in Iranian fertility since 2000, most likely because there has been very little change in the age at first birth. Our findings provide evidence that there is no need for Iran to implement punitive pronatalist measures.
Professor Peter McDonald, Professor of Demography, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU
Dr Meimanat Hosseini-Chavoshi, Research Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU
Professor Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi, Future Fellow, Australian Demographic & Social Research Institute, ANU
Associate Professor Arash Rashidian, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences