![](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/06\/iran-population.jpg\" "\\"iran-population\\"")
TEHRAN (The New York Times) \u2014 In their early 30s, married, and with prospects for successful careers, Bita and Sherag could be contemplating the logical next step in their lives: becoming parents.<\/p>\nTEHRAN (The New York Times) \u2014 In their early 30s, married, and with prospects for successful careers, Bita and Sherag could be contemplating the logical next step in their lives: becoming parents.<\/p>\n
But for them and an increasing number of young, middle-class Iranians who are deeply pessimistic over their country\u2019s future, raising a child is one of the last things on their minds.<\/p>\n
Bita, who like her husband asked for her family name to be withheld so they could speak freely, said she had had two abortions, which are illegal in Iran. \u201cWe are really serious about not having kids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s leaders have taken notice. Worried about a steep decline in fertility rates that experts are predicting could reduce population growth to zero within 20 years, Tehran has started a broad initiative to persuade Iranian families to have more children.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sounded the alarm in a speech last winter, saying he was \u201cshaking with fear\u201d over the \u201cdangerous issue\u201d of population decline and warning officials to begin grappling with it now.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a few years, when the current young generation becomes old,\u201d he said, \u201cthere will be no cure for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Khamenei followed that up with a 14-point program, announced late last month, that health officials hope will lead to a doubling of Iran\u2019s population, to 150 million, by 2050. Hospital delivery stays are now free, and women are allowed longer maternity leave. Reversing past policies to control population growth, the government has canceled subsidies for condoms and birth control pills and eliminated free vasectomies.<\/p>\n
Billboards in the capital show a laughing father with five children riding a single tandem bicycle up a hill, leaving far behind an unhappy looking father with only one child. Those parents who actually produce five children are now eligible for a $1,500 bonus, not that many here are likely to be tempted.
\u201cWhen I see those, I wonder, how can that father even smile?\u201d said Hadi Najafi, 25, an unemployed professional soccer player. He said he did not have the money to marry, let alone keep up with rents increasing by 25 percent a year.
\u201cAnybody with a lot of children is either very rich or very irresponsible,\u201d Mr. Najafi said. \u201cThere is no other way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The demographic problem has also become entwined with Iran\u2019s long-running conflict with the West over its nuclear program. One of the leading sources of Iran\u2019s economic troubles is the series of harsh Western economic sanctions imposed in recent years to punish Tehran and to bring it to the negotiating table.<\/p>\n
Though the population has doubled since 1979, most of the increase came in the years after the 1979 revolution, when sheer joy and hopes for a better future prompted many to have large families. The government also pushed procreation as a patriotic gesture during the bloody Iran-Iraq war, which ended in 1988 at a cost of at least 300,000 Iranian lives.<\/p>\n
At its peak, in the years after the 1979 revolution, Iran\u2019s birthrate was 3.6 children per couple, according to the Statistical Organization of Iran and experts, far above the replacement level of 2.1.<\/p>\n
Fearing that the country\u2019s economy would not be able to provide jobs for the growing number of young people \u2014 a situation with potentially explosive political repercussions \u2014 Iran\u2019s more moderate clerics introduced a \u201cfewer kids, better lives\u201d campaign to bring down the birthrate.<\/p>\n
But the number of children per couple has now dwindled to 1.3, more typical of a developed, high-income country like Germany, which is spending heavily to increase its fertility rate, now 1.4.<\/p>\n
Paradoxically, Iran has never had more people of reproductive age. A little under 70 percent of the population of 77 million is younger than 35, with most living in or near cities and increasingly embracing urban culture. But many of them are profoundly pessimistic.<\/p>\n
Like many young couples, Sherag, an architect, and Bita, a recent college graduate, cited a litany of problems as reasons for their dark outlook: an intrusive state and its conservative ideology, a sickly economy, political instability.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we go to bed we don\u2019t even know what will happen when we wake up,\u201d he said.
\u201cI just don\u2019t want to bring children into this hell,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That attitude is widespread among Tehran\u2019s middle class. \u201cEven with our combined incomes, my husband and I can\u2019t afford to rent a place, so we alternate between our parents\u2019 houses,\u201d said Negar Mohammadi, the manager of one of Tehran\u2019s most popular restaurants. \u201cIf I were to give up my job to have kids, how would we manage to rent a house for ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n
Some women and human rights activists suspect that the drive for more children is also aimed at keeping women in what conservative clerics believe is their place, the home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will make them more financially dependent on their husbands and the political system, prioritize the family\u2019s well-being over women\u2019s health and education and as a result of all these will make women\u2019s mobilization much more difficult,\u201d said Azadeh Kharazi, a sociologist.<\/p>\n
The new campaign has had at least one immediate impact, prompting a doctor formerly specializing in vasectomies to shift to Botox injections. For years, the doctor, Nasir Ahmadi, performed at least 60 vasectomies a month. Now, in a good month, he says, he does 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the state stopped paying, people stopped coming,\u201d he said.
At a shrine near Dr. Ahmadi\u2019s clinic, the cleric in charge, Mojtaba Takhtipour, said economics should not be the deciding factor. Sitting behind a laptop, Mr. Takhtipour took a sip of hot tea and explained that Islam orders a quest for a perfect society.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means we need to increase the number of Muslims, so we also need more kids,\u201d Mr. Takhtipour said. To those of his flock making financial arguments against having many children, he lectures on the scriptures of the faith. \u201cWe do believe that ultimately God will provide our daily bread. So go out and have kids and have faith, is what I always say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although they dominate in Iran, Shiites are a minority worldwide, making up roughly 10 to 20 percent of all Muslims. Not only are the birthrates in Sunni-dominated countries much higher than those among Shiites, but so, too, are those of Sunni minorities living in Iran.<\/p>\n
Tahereh Labbaf, the medical adviser to the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, which deals with the population issue, said that the birthrate for the country\u2019s Sunni Muslims is around four children per couple. \u201cThis is very sobering,\u201d a conservative website, Tasnim, quoted her as saying.<\/p>\n
Experts say that while birthrates in Iran are very low, there is no real crisis just yet. But they also say that financial incentives and faith will not by themselves reverse the population decline.<\/p>\n