Source:

July 27, 2010

TEHRAN — President of inaugurated a new policy on Tuesday to encourage population growth, dismissing decades of internationally acclaimed family planning in Iran as ungodly and a Western import.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in 2009. On Tuesday, he unveiled a plan to pay families for every new child.

The new government effort will pay families for every new child and deposit money into the newborns’ bank accounts until they reach 18, Mr. Ahmadinejad said. The program effectively rolled back years of efforts to strengthen the economy by reducing population growth.

Those who raise the idea of family planning “are thinking in the realm of the secular world,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said during a ceremony at which he presented the new policy.

The plan is part of his previously stated desire to increase Iran’s population, estimated at more than 70 million. He has previously said Iran could support as many as 150 million people.

The program is expected to be especially attractive to lower-income people, who formed the backbone of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s support in the presidential elections in 2005 and 2009.

Throughout his tenure, the president has promoted populist policies in Iran, where 10 million people are estimated to live below the poverty line.

It is unclear, however, where the money would come from to pay for the new incentives because the government is already having trouble paying for basic public works projects.

Starting in the early 1970s, Iran waged a successful family planning campaign across the country. It included banners in public health care centers that said, “Two children are enough.”

The effort was reversed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, only to be brought back 10 years later after the population expanded rapidly and the economy faltered.

Throughout the 1990s, Iran reduced population growth by encouraging men and women to use free or inexpensive contraceptives, as well as by promoting vasectomies. The government brought down the population growth rate to 1.6 percent from a high in 1986 of 3.9 percent.

Mr. Ahmadinejad caused an outcry after he was elected in 2005, when he said two children per family were not enough and urged Iranians to have more.

Under the new plan, each child born in the current Iranian year, which began March 21, will receive a deposit of $950 in a government bank account. The child will then receive $95 every year until reaching 18. Parents will be expected to pay matching amounts into the accounts.

Recipients will then be permitted to withdraw the money at the age of 20 and can use it for education, marriage, health or housing.