Iran battles to promote merits of marriage

[Demeter]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3441834c-0cce-11de-a555-0000779fd2ac.html

...a plan started more than a decade ago by the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, to encourage “student marriages”.

The organised weddings have brought together 40,000 students every year, out of a total student population of 3.5m.

These are the children of the 1979 Islamic revolution, products of the baby boom of the 1980s when Iran’s rulers were determined to strengthen the “Islamic army” by encouraging more births.

But now one of the regime’s biggest challenges is the army of educated people – not fighters – who are coming out of universities.

Today’s youth – 60 per cent of the population is under 30 – are not as eager for marriage as their parents. Better education, aspirations for independence and difficult economic conditions have driven up the marriage age for men from about 21 in the 1970s to 26 now, and for women from 18 to 25 during the same period....

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