The economic situation of the Iranian people has deteriorated to the point that Iran’s leaders and state organizations have no choice but to acknowledge it. This condition is the cause of many social disorders such as addiction and suicide.
“About 19 million people in Iran are marginalized and homeless,” said Abbas Akhoondi, the former Minister of Roads and Urban Development, in July 2017. Also, President Hassan Rouhani implicitly approved the statistic.
Meanwhile, in November 2019, Ali Rabiee, the spokesman for Rouhani’s administration, declared, “53 percent of Iranians do not own a car.”
In December 2019, another of Rouhani’s ministers, Mohammad Shariatmadari, announced, “60 million Iranians are receiving subsidies.” This figure is equivalent to 75 percent of Iran’s population.
According to the July 2019 report of the Statistics Center of Iran tallied by the 2016 census, “51 percent of the people of Tehran are tenants.”
“More than 70 percent of Iranian workers are minimum wage earners,” said Hadi Abui, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Workers of Iran, in April 2016.
In addition to the statements of the officials, the poor economic situation of the Iranian people has been a key topic in much of the state media.
“There were about 38 million marginalized people in Iran,” Shoare-e-Sal daily quoted Fardin Yazdani, a housing economist, as saying in July 2020.
Furthermore, back in March 2017, the Parliament (Majlis) news agency Khane-e-Mellat (ICANA) cited Shahab Naderi, a then-MP, as saying, “80 percent of the Iranian society is below the poverty line.”
In June 2016, Shahr Ara News website reported that the number of working children in Iran is “between 3 and 7 million“—a figure which is now significantly higher.
The media also report that 3 million female-headed households are bearing the brunt of the hardships of life in the current miserable situation in the country.
In September 2019, Bahar News website quoted Nasser Aslani, the Deputy Director of Supply and International Affairs of the Anti-Narcotics Headquarters, as announcing the existence of 4.408 million addicts in Iran.
According to the Independent, in Iran, 13 people commit suicide every day.
in June 2016, Radio Zamaneh website also listed the causes of suicide in Iran. “For years, official suicide statistics have not been published in Iran. But various studies show that more than 70 percent of suicides are of economic origin,” the website wrote. In other words, poverty is the cause of 70 percent of suicides in Iran.
In such circumstances, the government has reduced the education budget. “Currently, the share of education in the public budget in the country is about 8.9 percent, while in the world this number is 14 percent. That is, the government decided to shift the education to the private sector and pay the minimum wage to 100,000 people in education,” the deputy chairman of the parliamentary education commission, Mahammad Vahidi, revealed in an interview with Tasnim news agency on October 25.
He also admitted that currently, 3.5 million students do not have access to the “Shad” application [an application created for online education because of the coronavirus outbreak], according to Tasnim.
There is rising homeless in the capital Tehran—700,000 people sleep in care houses. On Saturday, October 24, the advisor of Tehran’s mayor said that “Last year, we had about 490,000 people serving at night in Tehran’s care houses. However, this year, this number is expected to increase to 700,000 at night. Last year, 22,000 women spent the night, and this year 27,000 of our homeless women spent the night in Tehran’s care houses.”
