Week 14: Iran

Will peak in population size by mid-century and Fesenjan + Tahdig (and more)

The global geopolitical landscape is currently undergoing a seismic shift, with the U.S.–Israel at war against Iran. It represents one of the most consequential military interventions in recent Middle Eastern history with far-reaching implications. I am not an expert on the topic and do not claim to be one. But I do know that Iran has been a fascinating demographic outlier for decades while experiencing previous wars. That said, the implications of demographic change in Iran is a critical piece of the challenge facing the country in the coming years, which will be exacerbated by the current conflict in ways that are not totally clear at the moment.

By 2005, Iran’s total fertility rate (TFR)—an estimate of the average number of children that a woman is expected to bear during her lifetime—had declined to about two children per woman, dropping from a peak above 6.5 children in the mid-1980s. (a 70% decline in roughly 15 years!) Iran’s transition, from that peak to below 2.5 children per woman, remains to this day the most rapid countrywide decline in total fertility rate recorded in the UN estimates (from 1950 to the present). Iran outpaced even China’s decline in fertility, and did so without resorting to the coercion that featured in local applications of Beijing’s one-child policy.

Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2017),

If China (last week) was a Group 1 country whose population has peaked, Iran is firmly in Group 2, projected to peak in population size by mid-century. Even before the war, the (deeply unpopular) government had to contend with a rapidly aging society, a fertility decline, and an unprecedented environmental crisis.

The Family Planning Revolution

To begin the outlier story, one has to begin with the ideological whiplash of its family planning history. This is the part that makes heads spin. The Islamic Republic of Iran -a theocratic state governed by clerical authority - ran what may have been the most effective voluntary family planning program in the developing world.

Recently, the Iranian government has been aggressively pursuing pronatalist policies to counteract the low fertility rate (TFR is currently below replacement level at 1.68). A major initiative was the 2021 Law on Family Support and Population Rejuvenation, which aims to increase marriage rates and childbearing. The scope of the law is vast and includes: banning free contraceptives, restricting permanent sterilization, and making abortions and prenatal testing significantly harder to obtain. To encourage larger families, the policy offers financial incentives such as low-interest housing loans, car purchase eligibility for mothers, and extended maternity leave. Additionally, it prioritizes the hiring of married men with children and mandating that state media and school curricula promote large families and early marriage.

This is a sharp reversal from the progressive family planning program that students of demography learned as a case study in how to design and implement one. It has been hailed as a “miracle,” with levels of childbearing declining faster than in any other country.

There have been 4 phases of the family planning program of note, which I will summarize below from this excellent article and others. I couldn’t get a copy of this book in time, but did get a few chapters.

Phase 1: Iran was one of the first countries to establish a family planning program as part of its development plan in 1967. The biggest success of the program was in recruiting and training a cadre of professional staff, and teaching many young doctors about family planning’s implications for public health and its critical role in improving the wellbeing of women and children. This ensured that family planning became an integral part of maternal and child health services nationwide. The TFR, although declining, remained high, at more than six births per woman, and mostly in urban areas.

Phase 2: The 1979 Revolution brought a total ideological reversal. The new Islamic leadership viewed family planning as a pro-Western plot. When the war with Iraq began in 1980, the state narrative shifted to one of national survival. Ayatollah Khomeini called for an “army of 20 million,” and the government backed this with pronatalist policies, linking food rations and social benefits to family size. This period saw a massive surge in births where fertility peaked at nearly 6.5 births per woman, creating a demographic momentum.

Phase 3: By 1989, the war had ended, and the government faced a staggering economic reality: the population had doubled in just ten years, and the state could no longer afford to educate or employ its youth. The government in turn, revitalized the family planning program. They secured the blessing of religious leaders who issued fatwas declaring contraception compatible with Islam. In Iran’s vast rural areas, these services were delivered through the state-supported network of local “health houses,” staffed principally by trained female technicians. Importantly, the rise of female literacy and the nationwide integrated network meant that for the first time, rural women were active participants in the decline. Fertility plummeted to replacement level in record time.

Phase 4: The narrative shifted again in 2012 when the state looked at its shrinking workforce and aging population. In 2014, Iran passed legislation to eliminate free contraception, to prohibit vasectomies, to enable younger marriages for women, to subsidize additional births, and to curtail Iran’s unusually progressive pre-marriage education program. Companion legislation restricted women from some professional university majors. The government launched a new era of pronatalism, culminating in the 2021 law I mentioned at the outset. This state narrative is clashing with the modern economic reality of the Iranian people. Despite the government’s push, fertility remains below replacement as a highly educated population grapples with economic uncertainty.

What else is going on?

Source: Asadisarvestani & Sobotka (2023)

The figure above shows just how dramatic the drop in TFR was, and the authors argue that while policies were important, the fertility decline was largely due to other factors.

Policies aimed at promoting family planning were launched at times when fertility rates were already declining (1967, 1989), whereas policies aimed at boosting fertility (1989, 2012) failed to lead to sustained fertility increases. It is evident that the fertility decline in Iran was due largely to rising levels of education, improved healthcare services and enhanced social and economic development, and shifts in family planning policies either helped couples to better achieve their fertility goals or rendered this aim more difficult (in the case of pronatalist policies).

The role of integrated health care: Integrated primary health care, particularly in rural areas via “health houses” or rural outposts that dispense basic health services to the population (not just limited to family planning) have been one of the major health-related success stories from Iran. The extrapolation of health houses as a major accelerant of fertility decline however is debatable, with some scholars attributing them to only 4-20% of the decline between 1986-1996.

Education and marriage: As a 2010 World Bank report notes, the fertility decline coincided with improvements in primary and secondary education, particularly for women. Adult literacy programs introduced under the government’s development policies also brought education to rural women who had not had access to formal education. Female employment has increased since the 1980s, contributing to delayed childbirth and fertility decline, but remains low (13%) when compared to other lower-middle income countries. Recent research has shown that the 2021 law actually led to a marriage boom, not a baby boom as hoped. The authors find that legislation is not closely aligned with the social values and aspirations of the young generation.

Religion: Whatever the “main cause” of fertility decline, I think that the role of religion, specifically the buy-in of family planning by religious leaders is worth addressing. From the Guttmacher Institute (1999):

Momentum, baby!

This massive surge in births during the 1980s created a demographic echo that ensures population growth today.

Let me explain. Iran’s population is currently at 91 million and is projected to peak at about 102 million in 2053. (based on assumptions made by the UN that you can read about here.) Our World In Data has a nice country snapshot, where you can see that fertility has been declining, mortality has been improving, and net migration is positive. Despite that, Iran is characterized by an age structure that is more conducive to population growth over the next few decades, and not population decline. See figure below for comparisons between the 3 UN groups.

Source: UN World Population Prospects (2024)

Essentially, population growth in Iran (and some other Group 2 countries like Brazil and Vietnam) is a result of a phenomenon called population momentum.

Fertility, mortality, and migration rates determine the age structure of any particular population. Once created, however, a population’s age structure embodies certain intrinsic properties of change. Population change can therefore result from a population’s age structure as well as from fertility, mortality, and migration. The potential for change that is inherent in a population’s age structure is known as population momentum.

Population momentum generates a substantial portion of year-to-year and decade-to-decade population change. The United Nations (UN) estimates that two-thirds of the projected increase in global population through 2050 will be driven by population momentum (United Nations Population Division, 2022).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2024)

What does this mean in practice?

Here, think of it as the tendency for the population to continue growing even after declines in the TFR. This occurs because a large percentage of young people entering reproductive age (because of high fertility in the past), ensures a high number of births, meaning population growth lags behind falling fertility rates. So, even if the number of births per woman is falling, the fact that the cohort of women having those births is large, generates that growth. If you are interested in visualizing this, I can’t think of a better 2.5 mins spent than watching Hans Rosling play with toilet paper rolls. Or, you can look at the population pyramids below.

Source: UN World Population Prospects (2024)

Does momentum just run its course?

While it may seem that there is little governments can do to attend to its population if momentum is going to momentum, that’s not really true. The experience of that momentum (or here, growth), is dependent on policy steers toward prosperity and not crisis. Easier said than done, as current circumstances demonstrate.

As it stands, the Total Dependency Ratio is quite favorable to accelerate economic growth (roughly 100 workers per 44 dependents). Additionally, even if people are having fewer children, the momentum means that the absolute number of households will increase. This may drive even more migration to cities, meaning governments must invest in urban infrastructure and affordable housing. Iran is already water-stressed, and the government must decouple population growth from resource consumption before the population peaks. Eventually, this large cohort driving population growth today will age, resulting in a need for pension reform and health system redesign. This ideally should happen while the working-age population is at its peak. Currently, the government is pursuing pronatalist policies to counteract the low TFR (like many other countries in the same position). But, these policies are an attempt to try to keep the momentum going longer to postpone the needs of an aging population. If none of the underlying conditions (inflation, unemployment, etc.) improve, these incentives will likely fail. Additionally, the benefits of Iran’s favorable demographics may be squandered if the country continues to hemorrhage its top minds and fails to proactively reform social services. Some Iranian officials estimate that 150,000 educated Iranians emigrate abroad annually, costing the country over $150 billion per year.

All this aside, the country is currently in the middle of a war, and seeing massive internal displacement. A UNHCR press release from March 12 states:

Between 600,000 and 1 million Iranian households are now temporarily displaced inside Iran as a result of the ongoing conflict, according to preliminary assessments, representing up to 3.2 million people. Most of them are reportedly fleeing from Tehran and other major urban areas towards the north of the country and rural areas to seek safety. This figure is likely to continue rising as hostilities persist, marking a worrying escalation in humanitarian needs.

Also affected are refugee families hosted in the country, mostly Afghans, who are particularly vulnerable, given their already precarious situation and limited support networks. Families are leaving affected areas amid rising insecurity and limited access to essential services.

Who knows what is next, and at what human cost. What does this mean for population momentum and who remains? What does the country’s infrastructure for schools, jobs, and healthcare look like when this is over? Unfortunately, demography is not that specific of a crystal ball.

The Water Crisis

If the marriage market was a fixation for me when thinking about implications of population change for China, it’s water for Iran. The term “water bankruptcy” should shake anyone to their core. Dozens of dams that once supplied the capital are now alarmingly low, leaving Tehran facing the possibility of “running out of water within weeks,” and even prompting government discussions of evacuating the city if supplies collapse.

Iran’s capital Tehran could be weeks away from “day zero,” experts say — the day when taps run dry for large parts of the city — as the country suffers a severe water crisis. Key reservoirs are shrinking, authorities are scrambling to reduce water consumption and residents are desperately trying to conserve it to stave off catastrophe.

Human activities, including excessive groundwater pumping, inefficient farming practices and unchecked urban water use have pushed the region “toward what can only be described as water bankruptcy.”

In Tehran, so much water has been pumped from aquifers to support its increasing population that parts of the city are sinking, sometimes by more than 10 inches a year.

Source: CNN (2025)

This acute emergency is the culmination of decades of flawed policy, overly ambitious agricultural goals, and a five-year drought aggravated by climate change. Aggressive dam projects have replaced the sustainable, ancient qanat water-management systems.

[A digression because I think this is fascinating, skip if you are not interested in the intricacies of this water system. Qanats tap into groundwater in hillsides and use gravity to transport it to arid plains and cities for irrigation and drinking(!!) BUT, since the 1950s, Iran has replaced qanats with over a million deep wells equipped with powerful electric pumps. While qanats are inherently sustainable (they only take what rain replenishes), deep wells allow for overpumping. This has lowered water tables so significantly that the water level is now below the reach of the ancient qanat tunnels, leaving them dry. Iran became one of the world’s top dam builders, but these projects often backfired. Large reservoirs increase water loss through evaporation and prevent surface water from seeping into the ground to recharge the aquifers that qanats rely on. Extended periods of extreme drought and rising temperatures have reduced snowpack in the mountains. This snowmelt is a primary source of groundwater, and its decline means there is less water entering the system to keep the qanats flowing. As wells became the preferred method for water extraction, the specialized knowledge and labor required to maintain the 2,500-year-old qanat tunnels began to fade. Without regular cleaning and upkeep, the tunnels cave in—a process accelerated by land subsidence (the ground sinking) caused by the empty aquifers below. The Iranian government’s push for food self-sufficiency led to the massive expansion of water-intensive farming. Experts argue that mismanagement prioritized short-term crop yields through aggressive pumping over the long-term sustainability of the qanat system.]

Source: Yale School of the Environment (2025)

Why do I linger on the water crisis?

Well, it is directly linked to the demands of a growing population. Scholars have long studied the link between population growth and resource depletion (a contentious topic). Stark numbers below lay that bare.

Source: Population Connection

What makes Iran’s situation especially precarious is that supply and demand (read, demand due to population growth) are moving in opposite directions. Water supply is expected to fall from around 670 billion cubic meters in 2019 to roughly 540 billion cubic meters by 2080, a decline driven by decreasing rainfall and climate change. At the same time, demand is expected to increase by 30% by 2050, largely due to growing household demand as the population grows. Tehran, home to about 10 million people with high per capita water use, already struggles with this growing tension. In 2025, when Iran’s rainfall was 40% lower than the long-term average, reservoirs supplying the capital fell to about 12% of their capacity.

Increased numbers of households and implications for water demand go further than that. It is linked to food security and the increasing demand for food as detailed in this excellent report. Authors find that the water bankruptcy is also caused by a massive imbalance where consumption (driven by a pursuit of food self-sufficiency) is 80% higher than sustainable thresholds. As the population grows, the demand for food and water will outpace any gains from modernizing irrigation, which can only save a fraction of what is required for sustainability. Consequently, the authors argue that Iran must abandon its ideological focus on self-sufficiency and pronatalist population policies, as the current environmental footprint is already unsustainable. To achieve true food security, the plan recommends a strategic reduction in domestic farming, a shift toward importing food to preserve remaining water resources, and the development of a governance framework that prioritizes equitable water distribution over continued agricultural expansion.

The Equitable Divide

That word “equitable” is particularly salient here. To begin with, last year’s protests against the regime were not isolated from the realities of the water crisis: Many of these protest hubs overlap with areas where severe water shortages in recent years have made life increasingly difficult. These are not isolated security incidents, but repeated episodes of escalation in regions already under acute water stress and economic strain, where basic service failure has been eroding public tolerance for years.

So, are people being disproportionately affected by the water crisis? I initially thought that it can’t be - almost every province in Iran is suffering from acute water threats. But, as always, that’s not the full story. Iran is a highly diverse country, both ethnically and culturally. Persians make up approximately 61% of the population, while significant minority groups include Azerbaijanis (16%), Kurds (10%) and others, such as Lurs (6%), Arabs (2%), Baloch (2%) and Turkic groups (2%). These communities are largely concentrated in border provinces, maintaining their own languages, cultures, and traditions, as well as historical and cultural ties with neighboring countries such as Iraq, Turkey, and Azerbaijan.

The water crisis in Iran functions as a tool of political and economic marginalization that disproportionately impacts the country’s ethnic minority periphery. The central government frequently implements systematic water diversion projects, siphoning resources from minority-populated regions to support industrial and agricultural hubs in the Persian-majority central provinces.

Water scarcity increasingly threatens Iran’s social cohesion and national stability. Rural communities dependent on irrigation have witnessed orchards wither and livestock decline, prompting waves of migration to already stressed urban areas. These environmental pressures erode traditional livelihoods and ignite political grievances, as seen in demonstrations in Isfahan, Khuzestan, and other provinces under the slogan ‘We are thirsty!’ (Ma teshne im!). Residents frequently accuse authorities of misallocating water to industrial users or favored regions, while government responses often prioritize containment over addressing the root causes.

Scarcity also exacerbates long-standing regional and ethnic disparities. Inter-provincial water transfers—from Khuzestan and Chaharmahal-va-Bakhtiari to central provinces such as Isfahan and Yazd—have deepened resentment in peripheral areas. Arab communities in Khuzestan, Bakhtiari, and Lor populations in the southwest view these projects as benefiting Persian-majority industrial centers, reinforcing perceptions of historical neglect and political marginalization. Various protests in these regions, notably the farmers’ protest in Isfahan in April 2025, have occasionally escalated into clashes with security forces, road blockages, and attacks on construction sites, highlighting how hydrological stress intersects with ethnic identity, structural inequalities, and contested state–society relations.

Source: Geopolitical Monitor (2026)

This leaves minority communities with dried-up wetlands and crumbling infrastructure, prioritizing state-run industries and the needs of the center over the basic survival of marginalized groups. This mismanagement has led to the collapse of traditional livelihoods and forced migration among these populations. In Sistan and Baluchestan, the drying of the Hamun wetlands has destroyed the Baloch people’s fishing and farming economies, while the desiccation of Lake Urmia has subjected the Azeri population to salt storms that ruin crops and cause respiratory illness. Because these communities are often already economically fragile, they lack the resources to adapt to these man-made ecological disasters, leading to a cycle of poverty and displacement. Further, the Iranian state treats water scarcity in these regions as a security issue rather than an environmental one, often responding to grievances with force. When ethnic minorities protest for their right to clean water, the state frequently views these demands through a securitized lens, labeling them as separatist threats to justify violent crackdowns.

The Paradox and Human Cost

Even before the current war, Iran’s geopolitical isolation and longstanding exposure to U.S. and international sanctions have impacted the water emergency by constraining the country’s economic capacity. That said, conflict can exacerbate water challenges.

Research shows that across the world, infrastructure like desalination plants, dams, treatment facilities and pipes are increasingly targeted during warfare. Reports already suggest that military operations over the last month have damaged desalination plants in Iran and Bahrain. In already water-stressed regions like the Middle East, damaged infrastructure can push vulnerable water supplies from bad to worse.

Source: World Resources Institute (2026)

So, what can be done? Ironically, there is a “geopolitical paradox“ where the technical solutions most needed to resolve Iran’s water crisis—such as drip irrigation, wastewater recycling, and advanced leak detection—have already been mastered by its regional adversary, Israel. If Iran were to adopt Israeli-style precision irrigation across just half of its agricultural land, it could potentially save up to 30 billion cubic meters of water annually, which is six times the country’s current groundwater deficit. This likely won’t rise to the top of priorities for obvious reasons.

At the end of the day, the cumulative cost of this war is staggering, yet it likely represents only a fraction of its true long-term impact. As researchers from the Peace Research Institute Oslo have found in their study of the impact of armed conflict on meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, “[w]hile the direct consequences of conflict are bad, the indirect consequences are much worse.” For example, a medium-sized conflict with 2,500 battle deaths is estimated to reduce life expectancy of those within conflict zones by about one year and increase infant mortality by 10%.

For a country like Iran that is already close to that level of civilian deaths, the costs are compounded by an environment that is physically giving out and massive uncertainty about the future. Projections like those of the UN rely on multiple sources of data and are grounded in assumptions. Those assumptions may need to be greatly revised in the face of this war and ultimately, its consequences.

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The Food!

We made a veritable feast. We had fesenjan (a chicken-walnut-pomegranate stew) with tahdig (someday I will master this!) We also had veggie ghormeh sabzi (I was the only one who enjoyed it), mast-o-khiar (cucumber yogurt situation) and shirazi salad. The kids are on spring break so have been busy all day - they promise me they will get to their research on the weekend.

The mood was heavy. Can you tell by the tone of my somber post, unlike my usual?We listened to a variety of artists from here, mostly those whose artistry is in defiance of the regime.