Health Minister Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, the only woman in the cabinet, said Sunday that the Health Ministry’s policy is to encourage the population to increase in an attempt to avoid an aging demographic.
“The Health Ministry’s policy is to increase the population. The rate of population growth is currently something between 1.3 to 1.4 percent, and that must reach 2 percent in the future. That means every Iranian family should have a least two children,” she was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying.
She was asked about the Health Ministry’s widely acclaimed programs to limit births and replied, “All the birth control programs are abolished. Now the Health Ministry will encourage population growth.”
The move comes one week after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi denounced birth control programs as “wrong” and called for policies to encourage mored babies. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.)
Iran’s population increased dramatically after the revolution, rising from about 35 million at the time of the revolution to 75 million now. In recent years, however, Iran’s birth rate has dropped significantly. Still, studies project that even at current low birth rates Iran’s population will continue to grow until reaching about 100 million around 2050.
Then the great numbers of people born during the baby boom of the 1980 and 1990s will start dying off and a population decline would set if the volume of births does not rise soon.