Population trends and policies in Iran: The necessity for comprehensive national population plan

The Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced phenomenal demographic transitions over the last three decades. These changes have affected population growth and composition which has implications for future of population. Population policies as well as social and economic planning should be based on the past, current, and future population trends. Attention of high officials and policy makers to critical review of population policies is important; and comprehensive design and timely implementation of new policies will lead to a positive outcome for the country. However, it should be noted that changing policies and future planning depends upon deep, comprehensive, and evidenced-based studies. Unfortunately, despite attention to population issues, no comprehensive population plan has been documented by Iranian demographers, sociologists, economists and health officials. This has sometimes led to false hypotheses and assumptions by non-experts about past, current and future trends of population in Iran. Thus, in the absence of a comprehensive plan and a road map about population situation, hasty and haphazard policies (such as Atiyeh Plan, providing gold coin as incentive for childbearing, discontinuation of family planning program, etc.) have been proposed or implemented. Continuation of this situation will result in designing, approval, and implementation of unreasonable and incomprehensive policies which despite high cost and time would not lead to expected results. This paper aims to a) study population situation and the context for changing population policies, b) assess recent proposed hypotheses about population situation and its emerging issues, and c) provide some suggestions for preparation of comprehensive population policies for Iran.