Fertility In Iran Research Articles

FERTILITY DECLINE IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN: 1972–2000

Confounding all conventional wisdom, the fertility rate in the Islamic Republic of Iran fell from around 7.0 births per woman in the early 1980s to 2.1 births per woman in 2000. That this, the largest and fastest fall in fertility ever recorded, should have occurred in one of the world's few Islamic Republics demands explanation. The paper addresses this issue in three parts. The second part is its core: a description of fertility levels, trends and patterns in Iran by rural and urban areas and provinces in the 1972–2000 period. Own-children data from the 1986 and 1996 Censuses as well as the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) allow us to analyse single-year movements of fertility over the last three decades. This demographic description is proceeded by a socio-political history of Iran in the years 1970–2000, providing a context for the demographic changes. We conclude with some speculations linking specific socio-economic and political changes to the demographic change. Our concluding arguments suggest continued low fertility in Iran.

Statistical Center of Iran. A Study On The Effects Of Women’s Activity On Fertility in Iran – 1996. Tehran, SCI, 2001, 39 p.

Ce sont encore les donnees de l’enquete sur la fecondite et la mortalite de 1996 qui ont servi pour cette etude. Non seulement l’activite ou l’inactivite economique des femmes en rapport avec leur fecondite ont ete examinees, mais aussi le nombre d’enfants nes par femme a ete mis en rapport avec leur etat matrimonial. Les tableaux sont interessants mais les commentaires sont un peu emportes par les idees preetablies.

Bayesian Analysis of Event History Models with Unobserved Heterogeneity via Markov Chain Monte Carlo

This article describes an interesting application of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). MCMC is used to assess competing explanations of marital fertility decline. Data collected during the World Fertility Study in Iran are analyzed using methods developed to perform discrete time event history analyses in which unobserved heterogeneity is explicitly accounted for. The usual age-period-cohort identifiability problem is compounded by the presence of a fourth clock, duration since previous birth, and a fifth clocklike variable, mother's parity. The authors resolve this problem by modeling some of the clocks parametrically using codings suggested by alternating conditional expectation (ACE) and Bayes factors to decide which clocks are necessary. Compound Laplace-Metropolis estimates are used to compute Bayes factors for comparing alternative models. The new methods enable the authors to conclude that Iran's fertility decline was primarily a period effect and not a cohort effect, that it started before the Family Planning Program was initiated, that it was the same for women at all educational levels but varied depending on husband's education, and that it was greatest in the largest cities, particularly Tehran.

Demand or Ideation? Evidence from the Iranian Marital Fertility Decline

Is the onset of fertility decline caused by structural socioeconomic changes or by the transmission of new ideas? The decline of marital fertility in Iran provides a quasi-experimental setting for addressing this question. Massive economic growth started in 1955; measurable ideational changes took place in 1967. We argue that the decline is described more precisely by demand theory than by ideation theory. It began around 1959, just after the onset of massive economic growth but well before the ideational changes. It paralleled the rapid growth of participation in primary education, and we found no evidence that the 1967 events had any effect on the decline. More than one-quarter of the decline can be attributed to the reduction in child mortality, a key mechanism of demand theory. Several other findings support this main conclusion.

Status of Women and Fertility in Iran

The determinants of gender inequality of women specifically access to education health and economic resources including paid employment of women at the community level are examined. The association between fertility and the relative status of women and development is analyzed with 1976 census data from 162 communities in Iran. Hypothesis 1 linked the higher the status of women to development; hypothesis 2 to the later the family formation and lower fertility; and hypothesis 3 postulated higher development in the community with later family formation of women and lower fertility. At the primary level the enrollment rate of females is 74% of the enrollment rate for male children; at the middle school level the rate is only 54%; at the high school level the rate is less than 1/2 of that of male enrollment. The rate of mortality for 1-4 old females was 18.9/1000 people while for males it was 14.7 according to 1977 Iran Statistical Centre data. The average ratio of female labor force participation to that of men aged 15-64 was 17. On the average 34.2% of women 15-19 were ever-married in 1976 in Iran. The standardized regression coefficients for the models on development and gender inequality variables support the hypothesis concerning a lower proportion of ever-married women aged 15-19. In model 3 the coefficient for paid employment means the higher the relative access of women to paid employment the lower the proportion of family formation below age 20 and the explained variance is statistically significant. In model 4 the health variable (female:male ratio ages 1-4) adds to the explained variance in the family formation variable. The mean value of child-women ratio in the analysis of fertility and gender inequality is 801 children under 5/1000 women 15-44. In the final model the early family formation variable adds significantly to the total variance explained. In addition the effects of relative access to education employment and health are transmitted through early family formation in model 5.

The Value of Children in Rural and Urban Iran: A Pilot Study

This paper reports on a pilot study of value of children in Iran. Utilizing survey data from currently married women, perceived utilities and costs of children are examined in the context of rural and urban social structure of Iran. Social functions of children, those which reinforce the status of parents in the community, are very important for both rural and urban women. Psychological utilities are expressed more by urban women and economic utilities are highly perceived by rural women. Significant inverse relationship is observed between education, consumption of modern goods, employment out of home and the index of perceived economic utilities of children. Rural urban and socioeconomic differentials in utility of children are discussed in relation to differential fertility in Iran.

Education and fertility in Iran.

Studies providing evidence concerning literacy's relationship to fertility in Iran are reviewed. Reliable demographic data are unavailable for Iran before the 1st census in 1956. The 1966 census revealed a reversal of the normally expected larger female population, with a sex ratio of 107 men for every 100 women. The female population in Iran is accorded low status; only 29.6% of the population over the age of 10 was literate according to the 1966 census. A negative relationship between literacy or levels of education and fertility seems to have become a basic tenet of demographic theory. The hypothesis that as a woman's education increases she has fewer children has been confirmed in numerous studies, and, in response to this information, the Iranian government has sponsored several projects which incorporate family planning education into literacy projects. In view of the associations noted in other studies of the relationship between education and fertility, it seems wise to examine the effects of education on fertility in Iran. None of the studies reviewed give conclusive evidence that literacy is unrelated to fertility in Iran. Several of the studies reveal built-in biases: the husbands in Siassi's study were all military personnel; Gulick interviewed women who were already attending family planning clinics; Edlefsen and Liberman made some highly abstract and speculative predictions, and Lieberman et al. were basically measuring incomes instead of education. All of the studies do, however, give some indication of an irregular effect of education on fertility in Iran and swggest the need for further study of this variable.