Despite exhortations from ruling clerisy to be fruitful, and pro-natal policies intended to prop up birth rates, fertility in Iran is slumping once again.
Earlier this month, the Tehran Times reported that annual births in Iran fell below the million mark. According to the Civil Registration Organization in charge of Iran’s vital statistics, just under 980,000 births were recorded between the Iranian calendar year coinciding with 21 March 2024 through 20 March 2025.
It has been a very long time since so few babies were born in Iran. By the reckoning of the United Nations Population Division, we have to go back seventy years—to 1955—to find a time when Iranian annual birth totals were lower than today. The current birth level, as we see in Figure 1, is less than half as high as it was forty years ago, in 1985.
No less noteworthy is how rapidly Iran’s birth trends seem to be veering “off track”—i.e., downward—today. Iran’s just-reported annual birth total is about 14 percent lower than the U.N. Population Division was projecting in its 2024 World Population Prospects compendium. In those projections, Iran did not fall below a million births a year until 2050.
Since vital registration of births is close to complete in Iran and has been for some time, the new birth numbers are unlikely to be mere statistical artifact. An accelerated slump, therefore, seems underway—with the real Iran running about a generation “ahead” of expectations, or at least those of leading demographic experts.
So how low are fertility levels in Iran nowadays? Very low indeed, at least for a self-proclaimed Islamic Republic. But that paradox, in and of itself, is not exactly breaking news.
Long before this latest birth milestone, Iran’s fertility decline was already remarkable, as we see in Figure 2. U.N. Population Division estimates Iran’s total fertility rate (births per woman, or TFR) plummeted by over 70 percent in just 20 years, from about 6.6 in 1982 to barely 1.8 in 2002. In both relative and absolute terms, this was one of the most dramatic fertility declines of the entire post-war era—even more stunning in that it could not be attributed to exceptionally rapid socioeconomic modernization, like the birth revolutions in East Asia.
Iran entered sub-replacement fertility around the year 1999 and has remained stubbornly tethered to it ever since. Despite a slight “fertility bump” just before the coronavirus pandemic, Iran has never yet re-attained replacement, even fleetingly, during the 21st century.
In its latest round of projections, the U.N. Population Division was envisioning a TFR for Iran of 1.68 for 2024-2025. That would have placed the country about 20 percent below the level needed for long-term population stability.
But Tehran’s new birth numbers reveal that Iran’s current fertility rate is considerably lower. Those 2024-2025 birth totals imply a TFR closer to 1.45. They mean Iranian fertility is probably at least 30 percent below replacement—for now.
And that would be a national average. In much of Iran, fertility would be even lower. In Tehran province, TFRs were reportedly already down to 1.3 births per woman for the year ending March 2020. Given the latest birth figures for Tehran, crude calculations suggest a TFR today of under 1.2 for Tehran—perhaps as low as 1.15. In other words, Tehran province’s fertility could be 40 or even 45 percent below the replacement level today. Fertility levels for Tehran city presumably would be even lower.
Iran’s startling new birth numbers appear curiously consistent with fertility patterns emerging for others in its “neighborhood.” Turkey, for example, just released birth numbers for 2024; its national TFR was an estimated 1.48. The TFR for Ankara, the capital, was reportedly 1.15.
No less intriguing is the comparison with Europe. With its slide into steep sub-replacement, fertility levels in Iran now look positively European. (EU-27’s TFR in 2023 was 1.38.) Tehran province’s fertility today is comparable to the super-low levels in such European capitals as Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna (TFRs of 1.2, 1.2, and 1.2, respectively, in 2023).
Europe’s fertility patterns reflect its secular values: It is basically a post-Christian zone. Is a secular society likewise hiding beneath Iran’s religious dictatorship?
