The incentives include nine months of paid maternity leave and reduced working hours after that in an effort to boost the falling birth rate.
A few months ago, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi ordered an end to more than two decades of policies promoting family planning and encouraging fewer children.
Now the government is taking the next step of actively encouraging families to have more children.
The incentives as listed by the Fars news agency are:
• Nine months of paid maternity leave for each birth followed by the option of up to 21 additional months of unpaid leave. Fathers are allowed two weeks of paid leave. This applies in both the public and private sector.
• Mothers under 25 are to receive one-half gold coin for the first child and a full gold coin for the second child in an effort to encourage births at a younger age, on the assumption women can have more children if they start earlier. There will be additional gold gifts for those bearing children up to the age of 39. A full gold coin now sells for about $250 at Iranian banks.
• New parents will also be eligible for low interest loans, as well as free food baskets and medical benefits.
• Reduced working hours for mothers are also authorized, as the difficulty of working a full workweek while also taking care of children has been one of the reasons given for working women to have just a single child.
• Higher pensions and the opportunity to work from home are also offered as incentives.
After the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini encouraged large families. His encouragement swiftly produced results and the birth rate soared. But by the late 1980s, his advisers were telling him of the huge burden Iran faced as a result and he then reversed himself and encouraged birth control.
International family planning organizations lauded the Islamic Republic for its efforts and its outstanding success in lowering the birth rate swiftly. But Khamenehi became concerned when the birth rate fell so low that the population was not replacing itself and Iran faced the prospect of a declining population a few decades in the future.
Under the old policies, the government required engaged couples to attend a family planning course where they learned about condoms and other family planning measures in considerable detail. All that has now ceased.
It remains to be seen if the new policies will be effective in raising the birth rate. Some analysts think the main force driving the low birth rates of recent years has been the economy and lack of jobs. Young Iranians are not only having fewer children, they are also marrying at a much later age, a common sign of economic inhibitors to marriage.
The population of Iran is currently 75 million, more than double the population at the time of the revolution 33 years ago.
