Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 7
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Marriage rate in Iran is on decline despite the increasing young population, Mehr news agency reported Sept. 7.
Some 234,980 cases of marriage were registered in Iran during the first four months of current Iranian fiscal year (March 20-July 20), indicating a fall by 2.2 percent.
Marriage number started to fall in Iran in March 2012, when 874,792 marriages were registered in the country as compared to 891,627 marriages in preceding year.
This is while the marriage number was in increase until 2011 in Iran year-by-year.
Some 791,656 marriages were registered in Iran during the one-year period to March 2013, which was followed by 774,513 and 724,324 marriage cases in the next years.
While the number of registered marriages in Iran has decreased in recent years, the formation of single-member families is on the rise in the country.
Earlier, Ali Akbar Mahzoun, an official with Iran's National Organization for Civil Registration, said single-member families are on the rise, so that they have increased from 5.2 percent of total families in Iranian year of 1385 (March 2006-March 2007) to 7.1 percent in the latest census.
The official went on to say that 61 percent of Iranian families consist of a husband, a wife and a child, and 14.6 percent consist of a husband and a wife.
In 2014, the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced a list of general policies regarding the population increase in the country, including lowering age of marriage, facilitating and promoting marriage and child raising, lifting marriage obstacles as well as coverage of insurance for infertility treatment costs.
Iran has started to review the contraception policies in the country in recent years.
Khamenei condemned the country's policy on contraception, saying it too closely reflects the Western lifestyle. He said a population of 150 million to 200 million would be ideal for Iran.
Currently, Iran's population stands at about 80 million people.