(Iran) From Baby Boom to Baby Shortage

[unhappycamper]

http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2014/aug/13/baby-boom-baby-shortage

From Baby Boom to Baby Shortage
Garrett Nada
August 13, 2014 | 1:05pm

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.

~snip~

But the theocracy, drained by the costs of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, gradually realized that it could not feed, cloth, house, educate and eventually employ the growing numbers. So with the supreme leader’s approval, Tehran enacted one of the world’s most progressive family planning programs to slow population growth.

The program broke many taboos in a culture that favored large families. Clerics gave sermons on reducing family size, while female volunteers were sent door-to-door to encourage women to have fewer children. New billboards declared, “Fewer Children, Better Life.” Before marriage, couples had to take family planning classes. Health centers dispensed free birth control pills and condoms.

Ironically, the world’s only modern theocracy was home to the only state-supported condom factory in the Middle East, which reportedly produced 45 million condoms a year in 30 different shapes, colors and flavors by 2006. The United Nations and population organizations cited Iran’s program as a model for the Islamic world and developing nations. The United Nations bestowed awards on Iranian practitioners three times from 1999 to 2011.

[foxface]

1. Excellent

Most of the world is experience decline in fertility rate.