Fertility desire among Iranians: a nationwide study

During recent years fertility rate is decreasing in Iran. This study aimed to assess fertility desire, its correlates and reasons for fertility desire or fertility disinterest among Iranians.
This was a population-based study. A sample of married individuals living in all 32 provinces in Iran were asked whether they intend to have a child at present. Participants were interviewed via a structured questionnaire including items on socio-demographic and reproductive information. Participants also were asked to indicate reasons for desire or disinterest for fertility. Participants were free to name several reasons as they wish. Descriptive analysis was used to explore the data. Logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the association between fertility desire and independent variables.
In all 20935 individuals (10388 male and 10547 female) were interviewed. The mean age of participants was 36.28 (SD= 8.23) years. Overall 31.8% of the respondents indicated that they wish to have a child while the remaining 68.2 said that they did not. The most important reason for fertility desire was interest in having children (93.5%), followed by wish to experience parenthood (92.2%). The most important reason for disinterest was worry about the future of a new child (76.1%) followed by economic limitations (71.0%).
The results obtained from logistic regression analysis showed that infertility disinterest was significantly associated with older age [OR= 1.10, 95% CI(1.09-1.11 )], younger age at marriage [OR= 0.93, 95% CI(0.92-0.94)], female gender [OR= 1.44, 95% CI(1.24-1.67)], having more children at present [OR= 1.88, 95% CI(1.79-1.98)], lower number of abortion and stillbirth [OR= 0.86, 95% CI(0.82-0.92)] and living in urban areas [OR= 1.36, 95% CI(1.26-1.47)].
The findings suggest that willingness to experience parenthood and economic hardship are the most common reasons for fertility desire or fertility disinterest. The findings might help policy makers to implement appropriate interventions if they wish to improve population growth rate for the country.