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Sustained below replacement fertility leads to declining population size. Several countries in Asia have experienced below replacement fertility for many years. The paper applies a novel approach to examining the viability of using immigration to achieve zero population growth in six Asian countries: China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Thailand, Singapore and Australia. The novel approach is to estimate the level of immigration that would be required to maintain a constant annual number of births in the long term. Maintaining the number of births at the current level is the fastest way to achieve eventual zero population growth. A population with a constant annual number of births, labeled as a quasi-stationary population, also has a near-to constant age structure that is not excessively old. The study concludes that, for all countries except Australia, no reasonable level of immigration could produce a quasi-stationary population if fertility remains at the country's 2020 level. The constraining factors are the current population size and level of fertility and the extent to which there is acceptance of permanent immigrants in the country. If fertility were to increase over 15–20 years to 1.7 births per woman and the country was accepting of relatively large numbers of permanent immigrants, the quasi-stable outcome becomes potentially viable for all countries except China.

Objectives: Successful aging is an interdisciplinary concept. Despite the great body of literature on successful aging, few studies have focused on its subjective and multidimensional measurements. Thus, the present study aimed to develop an instrument to measure self-perceived successful aging. Methods: We used a mixed method approach. The successful aging dimensions were explored through an integrative review and qualitative study among 64 older adults. Based on the obtained qualitative data, initial item pool was designed and its content validity was evaluated. A quantitative survey among 600 older adults and exploratory factor analysis was applied to test the structural validity of the instrument. Results: The EFA results indicated that the instrument loaded into seven factors; “psychological well-being”, “social support”, “financial and environmental security”, “spirituality”, “physical and mental health”, “functional health”, and “health-related behavior”. In addition, the instrument had a high degree of reliability coefficients. Discussion: The obtained results indicated methods of measuring successful aging, as well as the importance of generating social policy in the area of aging well; researchers should consider all dimensions of successful aging at individual and social levels.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced a remarkable demographic transition over the last three decades. As a result of social, demographic and economic changes, Iran’s fertility declined from 7.0 births per woman in 1980 to around 1.8 to 2.0 in 2011 based on our estimation (McDonald et al. 2015). The initial rise and rapid fall of fertility accompanied by a decline of child mortality led to a post-revolutionary youth bulge in the age distribution that will lead to rapid ageing in the longer-term future. Others have argued that Iran’s fertility has fallen to much lower levels - as low as 1.5 births per woman (eg. Erfani 2013). Such low estimates led to the Government of Iran adopting a pronatalist policy with the aim of increasing fertility, although the components of the policy are still under discussion. Different views have been expressed on the role of family planning and other programs in meeting population policy goals in Iran in the future with some advocating the discontinuation of government assistance to family planning. This paper aims to review the trends and levels of fertility, marriage, and family planning and their implications for policy. Using various datasets and detailed parity-based measures of fertility, the dynamics of fertility regulation practiced by Iranian couples are investigated. Our findings suggest that contraceptive use stabilized before 2000 and postponement of the first child and wide birth intervals are the main contributors to the level of fertility. Therefore, instead of discontinuation of the family planning program, policy to sustain fertility at its present level or a little higher needs to focus upon improving the economic circumstances of young people so that they are able to make less constrained choices about family formation than is the case at present.

The aim of this article is to explore the perceptions of successful ageing among Iranian elderly. The data were collected in Tehran city on 60 older adults using a semistructured interview. The collected data were analyzed using directed content analysis. The findings revealed various dimensions of successful ageing among Iranian older adults. Social well-being is the most prevalent dimension of successful ageing, followed by psychological well-being, physical health, spirituality and transcendence, financial security, and an elder-friendly environmental and social context. Also, the findings from this study provide a new understanding of successful ageing in the context of Iran and contribute additional elements. This qualitative study highlights the importance of multidimensional and contextual viewpoints to successful ageing. In conclusion, to achieve multidimensional successful ageing, the interaction between all levels of successful ageing such as individual, family, and environment must be considered.

Reproductive health covers a broad range of medical and social issues related both to the female and male reproductive organs, and to the morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy, parturition and sexual behaviours. Most countries lack direct information on sexual issues because of normative limitations on research, difficulties encountered in survey or administrative data collections, and because of inconsistent treatment of definitions and comparisons. Perhaps the key measure of reproductive health in recent decades is the maternal mortality rate (MMR), prominent in both the Millennium Development Goals and the recently updated Sustainable Development Goals. Most countries of Asia struggle to measure maternal mortality. Efforts to set out key indicators of skilled birth attendance and proportions of caesarian deliveries are complicated by non-standard measurements collected by the World Health Organization and the statistical units of the United Nations. Other chapters of this handbook focus on contraceptive and abortion data. This chapter engages in the relatively sensitive topic of sexually transmitted diseases, and the important and challenging cancers of female and male reproductive organs. The institutions of reproductive and sexual health are inhibited by inadequate budgets, inadequately trained health workers or overly moralistic policymakers. Citizens suffer from infections and non-communicable diseases that are amenable to preventive or curative care elsewhere in the world. Asian nations notably lag behind all other continents in programs of Human Papilloma Virus vaccination thus exposing citizens to preventable cancers and infectious reproductive diseases.

Objectives: The aims of the study were to determine the prevalence, types and socio-economic correlates of consanguineous marriages in Iran, and to gauge the extent to which consanguinity influenced fertility, pregnancy outcomes and the expression of genetic disorders in the present-day population. Methods: Data on the prevalence of consanguinity and birth outcomes in the first marriages of 5,515 women were abstracted from the 2005 Iran Low Fertility Study [Hosseini-Chavoshi et al: Fertility and Contraceptive Use Dynamics in Iran: Special Focus on Low Fertility Regions. Canberra, Australian National University, 2007]. The results of associated socio-economic variables were collated and assessed by Pearson's χ2 analysis and logistic regression. Results: Overall, 37.4% of the marriages were consanguineous (α = 0.0149), but with major differences between 4 representative populations. Consanguinity was higher among rural couples, older marriage cohorts, women marrying at a younger age, and women with lower levels of formal education. In general, consanguineous couples had higher mean numbers of pregnancies, live births and surviving children. Conclusions: Given declining family sizes, a rapid urbanization and increased educational and employment opportunities, it seems inevitable that consanguineous marriages will decline in prevalence in Iran, albeit more slowly in more traditional rural communities. Predictably, there will be a concomitant reduction in the incidence of recessive genetic disorders, but this is against a background transition from communicable to non-communicable diseases.

The present paper examines the level and correlates of unintended pregnancies among young women in the Islamic Republic of Iran using a sub-sample of 4,402 ever-married women aged between 15 and 24 from the 2010 Iran Multi-Indicator Demographic and Health Survey (IrMIDHS). Multivariate analysis is then applied to the 2005 Iran Low Fertility Survey (ILFS) to explore the experience of pregnancy termination in young ages. The comparison of the outcomes of wanted and unintended pregnancies shows that the proportion of both induced and spontaneous abortions are significantly higher for unintended than for wanted pregnancies. The higher rates of abortion among the more recent pregnancy cohorts (1995-2005) indicate an increasing trend of pregnancy termination in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The paper concludes with a recommendation stressing the importance of continued provision of family planning services to young couples, in order to reduce the risk of unintended pregnancy and to avoid unsafe and clandestine abortions that may cause numerous irreversible adverse effects on women's health.

Iran has had replacement fertility since 2000. Upholding a small family size has led some couples to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is, however, permitted only on medical grounds in Iran. Using data from the Iran Low Fertility Survey, this study assessed sociodemographic correlates of abortion among a random sample of 5526 ever-married women aged 15-54 years, and used in-depth interviews to explore reasons for and psychological consequences of abortion among 40 women who had experienced an unintended pregnancy. Although social and economic concerns were the main reasons cited for seeking abortion, women experienced anxiety and depression when seeking pregnancy termination and thereafter. Social stigmatization arose from a belief that abortion is sinful and that misfortune experienced thereafter is punishment. Inadequate knowledge and misunderstanding of relevant Sharia laws discouraged women from seeking care when they experienced complications. Iran's reproductive health policies should be revised to integrate pre- and postabortion counseling.

High parity has been hypothesised to lead to a shorter and less healthy life. Using the 2007 Taft Ageing Health and Fertility Survey consisting of 696 women aged 50–79, this paper examines the extent to which women’s health in middle and older ages is affected by their childbearing histories. The results show that high parity (> 8) is associated with a reduction of GP-rated health by 0.094 points on a scale from 1 to 10. These health reductions are four times as large as those of an extra year of age, and are robust to controlling for birth interval, age, area of residence, education, marital status, work history, economic satisfaction and surviving daughters. There is a positive but curvilinear relationship between shorter birth intervals (< 2 years) and GP-rated health accounting for socio-demographic factors. Our analysis suggests that parity and birth intervals, along with socio-demographic characteristics, affect women’s well-being in later life.

During the first few years of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and aided by pro-natal government policies, Iranian fertility was on the rise. In a reversal of its population policy, in 1989, the government launched an ambitious and innovative family planning program aimed at rural families. By 2005, the program had covered more than 90% of the rural population and the average number of births per rural woman had declined to replacement level from about 8 births in the mid 1980s. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a particular feature of the program - health houses - on rural fertility, taking advantage of the variation in the timing of their construction across the country. We use three different methods to obtain a range of estimates for the impact of health houses on village-level fertility: difference-in-differences (DID), matching DID, and length of exposure. We find estimates of impact ranging from 4 to 20% of the decline in fertility during 1986-1996.

Low fertility has become an important area of demographic research as fertility in many countries has fallen to levels well below replacement. Advanced countries have experienced low fertility trends for decades (United Nations, 2000), and some are experiencing lowest-low fertility (i.e. TFR below 1.3) (Kohler, Billari and Ortega, 2002; Caldwell, 2006). Less developed countries, by contrast, have recently experienced low fertility levels, and there no longer seem to be any barriers to most countries reaching replacement level and subsequently falling below that level. According to the United Nations, by 2000, around 44 per cent of the world population lived in countries where fertility had fallen below the replacement level. This proportion is expected to increase to 67 per cent by the year 2015 (United Nations, 2000). According to the United Nations median variant projections, approximately 80 per cent of the world’s population is projected to live in countries with below-replacement fertility before mid-century (United Nations, 2002a). Several East and North-East, as well as North and Central Asian countries have attained below replacement in recent decades (Gubhaju and Moriki-Durand, 2003; Atoh, 2001; Hirschman, Chamratrithirong and Guest, 1994; Knodel, Chamratrithirong and Debavalya, 1987). However, countries have attained low fertility in different ways (Perelli-Harris, 2005) and thus, every country and region may have a unique experience in reaching low fertility. For instance, Hirschman, Chamratrithirong and Guest (1994) have argued that the distinctive attributes of East Asian countries such as Hong Kong, China; Singapore; the Republic of Korea; and Taiwan Province of China in terms of rapid economic growth and Confucian cultural heritage would not make them a model for fertility decline in other countries in Asia.

Muslims constitute around 23 % of the world population and this will increase over the coming decades. There has been a growing concern about the increasing size and trend of Muslim populations, both in North Africa and the Middle East, and in Europe and North America as hosts to Muslim immigrants. Furthermore, political events, particularly after the tragic ‘9/11’ event, have led to debates and discussions about the Islamic world. Comments and assertions about population issues of the Muslim world, and, particularly the implications of a growing number of Muslims in Europe and North America, are not always based on scientific evidence from experts in the field, and this has led to stereotypes about Islam and Islamic countries. The media has played both to the understanding and misunderstanding of Muslims, and thus, there is a great demand for presenting an evidence-based analysis of population dynamics, and its social and political implications in Muslim countries. Riddle in her book, ‘Islam and the securitisation of population policies: Muslim states and sustainability’ examines the securitization of population policies in Islamic countries, emphasizing the evolution of population policies and dynamics in Iran and Pakistan. It seeks to deconstruct the myth of the clash between the West and Islam by highlighting the areas in which they stand together, and co-operate as ‘effective partners in global sustainability efforts’. This book draws on various sources of information, possibly not otherwise available to wider international readership: for example, Fatwa on population and family planning issued by Islamic clergies, media statements, newspaper articles and other related information published in local newspapers. In addition to this information, the author has conducted in-depth interviews with such key informants as policy makers, population experts and health service providers during her fieldwork and observations in Iran and Pakistan. These qualitative data allow for a

Background: Successful aging as an umbrella term with a large amount of literature has emerged with a variety of meanings and dimensions in different studies. This article aims at determining what dimensions contribute to constructing the concept of successful aging. Methods: The method used in this study is an integrative review of published literature related to successful aging. This method includes both qualitative and quantitative studies. Data searching was conducted during November and December 2014 and was then updated in October 2015. First, 2543 articles were identified, and after the screening phase, 76 articles were eligible for inclusion in the integrative review. Results: The results specified 14 subcategories and 5 main categories of successful aging: social well-being, psychological wellbeing, physical health, spirituality and transcendence, and environment and economic security. Conclusion: The present study provides a thorough understanding of successful aging dimensions and proposes the importance of the multidimensional concept of successful aging at the individual, interpersonal, and environmental levels for future studies and policymaking on population aging.

Iran has experienced remarkable demographic changes over the last three decades. After a major political shift from a monarchy to an Islamic Republic in 1979, the new government took a pronatalist ideology which resulted in the suspension of family planning programs and encouragement of early marriage and high fertility. However, the high fertility regime was short lived, and the government reversed population policies and programs in favor of fertility control in late 1980s. Rural development, advancement of education particularly for girls, and nationwide health network system providing free primary health care and family planning services accelerated fertility decline in all provinces as well as in the rural areas. Total fertility rate fell from around 7.0 births per woman in the early 1980s to the replacement level in 2000, and to the below replacement level by mid-2000s. These fertility changes have led to a population with a young age structure which in combination with the expansion of education created the so called ‘demographic window’ for the country. While potentially this ‘golden opportunity’ can result in economic prosperity, the current economic and political situation may hinder the positive prospects in the foreseeable future. Further fertility decline is projected for Iran, and the dynamics of current population calls for the revision of population policies and plans in the country.

SummaryConsanguineous marriage has been the culturally preferred form of marriage in Iran. This paper examines the extent to which education, urbanization and changes in modes of economic production have affected the incidence of consanguineous marriage and attitudes towards consanguineous marriages. The 2002 Iran Fertility Transition Survey conducted in the four provinces of Gilan, Sistan and Baluchistan, Yazd and West Azarbaijan provides information on the degree of relationship of marriage partners from around 6550 ever-married women aged 15–49. Attitudinal data were also obtained. Overall, the level of marriage to biological relatives ranged from 23% in Gilan to 78% in Sistan and Baluchistan. The paper finds that the practice of marriage to biological relatives has remained surprisingly resilient in the face of modernizing influences and that ethnicity, province and area of residence remain important determinants. On the other hand, attitudes have shifted towards marriage with a non-relative. Anthropological research would illuminate the processes of consanguineous marriage in Iran.

Iran has experienced one of the most rapid falls in fertility ever recorded. The observed pattern is one in which fertility has fallen simultaneously in all age groups, in all geographic settings and in all social groups, hence accounting for the rapidity of the decline at the national level. Available single calendar year time trends in the age-based total fertility rate and in age specific fertility rates elicit an interpretation of the fertility decline that is dominated by the influence of cross-sectional events such as the Islamic Revolution and the re-establishment of the family planning program. In this paper, we show that an analysis based on synthetic parity progression ratios provides a much richer interpretation of the trend in period fertility in Iran than does the conventional age-based model. In particular, the parity-duration model better identifies the impact on cross-sectional fertility of changes in the timing of marriage and successive births.

L’Iran a connu l’une des baisses de fecondite les plus rapides jamais observees. La fecondite a diminue simultanement dans tous les groupes d’âge, dans toutes les zones geographiques et dans toutes les categories sociales, ce qui explique la vitesse du phenomene au niveau national. Les donnees annuelles disponibles sur les tendances de l’indice synthetique de fecondite et des taux de fecondite par âge incitent a penser que la chute de la fecondite a ete principalement determinee par certains evenements ponctuels comme la Revolution islamique et la restauration du programme de planning familial. Dans cet article, les auteurs montrent qu’une analyse recourant aux probabilites d’agrandissement transversales conduit a interpreter les variations de la fecondite du moment en Iran d’une maniere beaucoup plus riche qu’avec le modele classique fonde sur les taux par âge. En particulier, le modele qui combine parite et duree ecoulee depuis la naissance precedente met mieux en evidence l’impact des modifications du calendrier du mariage et des naissances successives sur la fecondite du moment.

A first analysis of the Iran 2006 census results shows a sensationally low fertility level of 1.9 for the whole country and only 1.5 for the Tehran area (which has about 8 million people). The lowest total fertility rate of 1.3 was recorded for Gilan and Mazandaran provinces. In a recent study, Abbasi-Shavazi and McDonald (2006) emphasized the likely role of greatly improved female education in this trend. However, this hypothesis has not been thoroughly tested and they have not yet provided any formal analysis on this important factor. In the conclusions they express the expectation that fertility in Iran would continue to fall well below replacement level. This paper follows up on the Abbasi-Shavazi and McDonald (2006) paper in two important ways: 1) It presents fertility estimates based on the 2006 census which indicate a substantial further fertility decline; and 2) it presents reconstructions (back to 1970) and projections (to 2030) of the population of Iran by age, sex and level of educational attainment. It decomposes quantitatively to what extent this precipitous fertility decline can be attributed to the rapidly increasing educational attainment of women, and draws more general conclusions for theories of fertility decline.