The Role of the Government in Changes in Iran's Fertility Rate from the Perspective of Economic Variables

Population and fertility rates are one of the most important economic variables since they affect the aggregate labor supply and demand. Population growth has many influences on different aspects of life, such as markets, environment, education, employment, and finally economic growth. In this paper, we investigate the effect of economic variables such as per capita production, housing rent, family planning, women's participation rate. This study investigates the data of the variables in period of 1360-1395 about Iran which has been done by ARDL method. The results show that per capita income has a negative effect on fertility. The women's education and participation should be interpreted along with other factors, because alone are not good explanations for the total fertility rates. In these years when the government imposed a family planning programme, fertility rates have declined. The house rent rate also has unclear impact on fertility rate, because fertility rate is high when house rental rate is low, but when house rental rate is high, the fertility rate doesn't decrease.