BEST TOURS TO IRAN

PEOPLE AND SOCIETY

The population of Iran was estimated at 65,875,223 in 2008. This figure is more than double the 1975 population of 33,379,000. Between 1956 and 1986 Iran's population grew at a rate of more than 3 percent per year. The growth rate began to decline in the mid-1980s after the government initiated a major population control program. By 2008 the growth rate had declined to 0.8 percent per year, with a birth rate of 17 per 1,000 persons and a death rate of 6 per 1,000. Nevertheless, Iran’s population remains young: About 55 percent of Iranians were 24 years of age or younger in 2003.

Overall population density in 2008 was 40 persons per sq km (104 per sq mi). Northern and western Iran are more densely populated than the arid eastern half of the country, where population density in the extensive desert regions is only 1 percent of the national average. In 2005, 68 percent of the population lived in urban areas. About 99 percent of rural Iranians resided in villages. Only 240,000 were nomads (people without permanent residences who migrate seasonally), down from 2 million in 1966.

Tehrān, the country’s capital and largest city, serves as the main administrative, commercial, educational, financial, industrial, and publishing center. Iran's other major cities include Mashhad, a manufacturing and commercial center in the northeast and the site of the country's most important religious shrine; Eşfahān, a manufacturing center for central Iran with several architecturally significant public buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries; Tabrīz, the main industrial and commercial center of the northwest; Shīrāz, a manufacturing center in the south near the ruins of the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis; and Ahvāz, the principal commercial and manufacturing center in the southwestern oil region.