Decreasing Total Fertility Rate in Developing Countries

Respected editor 1 In his article Bellieni mentioned ‘in western countries couples have high expectative about the advantages of delayed parenthood and exploit fertility as late as possible’ (1). Decreasing total fertility rate (TFR) is the number of children who would be born per woman (or per 1,000 women) if she/they were to pass through the childbearing years bearing children according to a current schedule of age-specific fertility rates. Replacement level is a figure of TFR and less than TFR it results in negative population growth rate, aging and population reduction. TFR below replacement level is an important problem in most developed and some developing countries (2). Iran experienced TFR below replacement level from 2006 (1.85). Results of next census (2011) revealed more decline in the country TFR (1.8) and it has been continued to be under replacement level. They were alarms to the policymakers to change country population policies in such a way to compensate this reduction. According to this warnings, new population policies developed and the Supreme Leader ratified population policy decree in 2014 (3). There are very important items in this decree which some of them have direct effect on health and family health. They are include: eliminate obstacle to marriage, reduction in marriage age, allocate adequate resources for women especially during pregnancy and lactation, development and strengthening the social security system, and prevention and treatment in line with reproductive health and childbearing and so on (4). In a national survey among Iranian girls and boys immediately before marriage, the number of wanted