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Iran's Demographic Collapse_ Forced Babies to No Babies to CRISIS
Solo Entertainment
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6/30/2025
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News
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00:00
Iran's birth rate collapse is historic.
00:04
What is the fastest a country has ever changed its mind about making babies?
00:09
This is a story about a society fundamentally re-engineering its future.
00:14
Iran holds the record for the fastest, most dramatic birth rate collapse.
00:19
This isn't just a statistic.
00:22
This is a story of how a nation of 92 million people slammed the brakes on its population growth so hard and so fast,
00:28
it shattered all precedents.
00:30
A decline in fertility that took some European countries 300 years to achieve,
00:36
Iran accomplished it in a single generation.
00:39
This is a story of the world record that no one intended to set.
00:45
So our story begins in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution.
00:49
The new supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, had a grand vision.
00:53
Facing a brutal war with Iraq and calling for the export of his revolution across the Middle East,
01:00
he needed a human wave.
01:02
The Ayatollah declared the family planning policies of the previous government a Western plot
01:09
and put massive pressure on Iranians to breed more,
01:13
to build a 20 million man army to defend the nation and confront its enemies.
01:20
The message from the state was clear.
01:22
Having more children was a sacred patriotic duty.
01:27
So in 1982, Iran lowered the marriage age for girls,
01:31
which was 18 years old in 1975,
01:34
to nine lunar years old,
01:36
which is about eight years and nine months using Western solar calendars.
01:41
So you basically have a subset of the population that was very much forced to create this new Iranian army,
01:50
while the government and religious leaders applied pressure throughout the population
01:55
to build up their 20 million man army.
01:58
The government dismantled family planning clinics
02:01
and celebrated large families as the national ideal.
02:05
The results were immediate and explosive.
02:08
By the 1980s, the total fertility rate was over 6.6.
02:13
At its peak in 1985, Iran's population wasn't just growing,
02:17
it was exploding,
02:18
hitting an annual population growth of 4.5% in a single year,
02:22
one of the highest the world has ever seen.
02:26
By the late 1980s, the Iran-Iraq war was over,
02:29
but the consequences of the baby boom were just beginning.
02:32
The government looked at the numbers and saw not a powerful army,
02:35
but an impending economic disaster.
02:39
An enormous youth bulge was about to hit a job market that could not absorb it.
02:44
So in a complete 180,
02:46
the exact same establishment that had championed the baby boom
02:50
decided to execute one of history's most abrupt policy reversals.
02:55
And what followed was a demographic event without precedent.
02:59
The birth rates didn't just decline,
03:01
it went into absolute freefall.
03:03
To put it in perspective,
03:05
it took the UK 95 years for their fertility rates
03:09
to drop from over six children to below three.
03:12
Iran did it in just nine years.
03:15
This was faster than China's infamous one-child policy.
03:19
Between 1980 and 2000,
03:22
Iran achieved a 70% decline in its total fertility rate.
03:26
from over 6.6 children per woman in 1980
03:30
to just 2.0 in 2000,
03:33
a speed that is completely unprecedented over a 20-year span.
03:38
And the state went on an all-out blitz.
03:41
It established a network of thousands of health clinics
03:44
offering free contraception.
03:46
It created mandatory premarital counseling
03:49
where family planning was a central topic.
03:52
And it enlisted the clerics to issue religious rulings
03:56
endorsing vasectomies and tube-tying.
03:59
Contraceptive use soared to about 74% among married women,
04:04
a rate comparable to most of the developed world.
04:07
This was turbocharged by a revolution in female education.
04:11
Female literacy rates were under 30% before the revolution,
04:15
and they shot up past 85%,
04:17
creating a generation of empowered women
04:19
who chose to have smaller families.
04:23
And the fertility rates in rural areas,
04:25
once a staggering 8.1 births per woman,
04:29
collapsed to just 2.1 in a single generation.
04:33
By the 2010s,
04:34
the sheer terrifying success of the program
04:36
sparked a new panic, though.
04:38
The leaders looked at the data
04:39
from the record-breaking success
04:41
and saw a future of empty schools
04:43
and overflowing retirement homes.
04:45
The median age in Iran in 1985 was just 17 years old
04:50
and is now around 34 years old today,
04:53
and it is on track to hit 43 by 2050,
04:56
making Iran one of the fastest aging societies in the world.
05:01
And this creates a profound national security paradox.
05:04
The regime has ambitions of being a regional superpower.
05:08
It funds proxies across the Middle East
05:10
and engages in high-stakes military confrontations,
05:14
like the recent direct missile and drone exchanges with Israel.
05:19
But a nation that is aging this rapidly,
05:21
with a shrinking pool of young men to recruit in a war,
05:26
and a smaller workforce to tax,
05:28
cannot sustain such a costly foreign policy.
05:32
That 20 million man army they once dreamed of
05:35
is now getting old,
05:36
with no replacement in sight.
05:38
Projections warn that by 2050,
05:40
a third of Iran's entire population
05:43
could be over the age of 60.
05:45
And of course, the result,
05:46
the government tried to change course yet again.
05:50
In 2021, it passed the Youthful Population
05:53
and Protection of the Family Law,
05:55
banning free contraception
05:56
and outlawing vasectomies in the public system.
05:59
But guess what?
06:00
It is not working.
06:01
The total fertility rate has continued to fall,
06:04
hitting a record low of around 1.6 in 2024.
06:07
In the year ending March 2025,
06:11
the number of live births in Iran fell below 1 million
06:15
for the first time since 1955,
06:18
when the country's population
06:19
was just a quarter of its current size.
06:22
So why the failure?
06:24
Because the government can't undo
06:26
the social and economic reality it helped create.
06:29
Young Iranians are facing crippling inflation,
06:33
which stood at 38.7% in May 2025.
06:38
And the youth unemployment rate is over 20%.
06:40
The youth of Iran are not listening
06:43
to the government's calls for more children.
06:46
They are listening to their empty wallets.
06:48
And here's the ultimate irony.
06:51
The Iranian government engineered the fastest,
06:53
most effective demographic revolution in modern history,
06:57
and in doing so unleashed forces it can no longer control.
07:01
It educated and empowered a generation of women,
07:04
and now seems shocked that those women
07:07
are making their own choices.
07:09
And they are learning a lesson many nations
07:11
have learned before.
07:13
It is far, far easier to convince people
07:15
to have fewer children
07:16
than to convince them to have more in this modern world.
07:20
They didn't just tap the brakes on population growth.
07:23
They virtually guaranteed their birth rates
07:26
never come back to replacement levels.
07:29
And unfortunately, with a GDP of just about $4,500 per capita,
07:34
they are a very long way from being a high-income nation.
07:38
And seemingly, they are destined for a population
07:42
that will exist in a downward spiral of perpetual poverty,
07:47
with some estimates showing their poverty rate
07:49
as high as 75% to 80% of the entire population.
07:53
Having a low fertility rate not only limits them
07:56
economically in many respects,
07:58
but it makes Iran far more vulnerable militarily,
08:02
where they really can't afford to lose
08:04
the relatively few young people it already has.
08:08
And now, as Iran stares down their strategic rivals
08:12
in ongoing conflicts
08:13
and grapples with a rapidly aging society,
08:17
they are dealing with the consequences
08:19
of setting a world record they never wanted.
08:23
The future of Iran is not a youthful revolutionary army,
08:27
but a nation growing old, quiet,
08:30
and facing a demographic destiny of decline.
08:33
And it's a perfect showing that when governments
08:36
try to invasively control their populations,
08:39
the end results often backfire in spectacular ways.
08:44
So how do you see Iran's collapsing birth rate
08:46
impacting their long-term future?
08:49
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
08:50
Please consider liking and subscribing.
08:52
This has been Blinded by Logic.
08:53
Thanks for watching.
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