Family Planning and Rural Fertility Decline in Iran: A Study in Program Evaluation

Abstract

During the flrst few years of the Islamic Revolution Iranian fertility was on the rise, in part because of the revolutionary government’s pro-natal policies. In a policy reversal, in 1989 the government launched an ambitious and innovative family planning program speciflcally aimed at rural families. By 2005, the program had covered more than 90 percent of the rural population and the average number of births per rural woman had declined to near replacement level from about 8 birth in the mid 1980s. In this paper we ask to what extent this decline was the result of the family planning program. We use the timing of establishment of rural health houses to identify the efiect of the program on change in village-level fertility. Our results indicate only a moderate efiect of the program on rural fertility. Fertility decline in villages that received health services earlier was only slightly greater than those that received it later. Our regression results indicate that other factors, such as initial literacy and availability of schools may have played a larger role in fertility decline than family planning.

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