Fifty-seven percent of the Iranian population, including 14.5 million children, are malnourished
The news made headlines in the state-run media in Iran on July 10, 2023, as a former official of the Iranian Labor Ministry revealed that a “humanitarian disaster” is in the making in Iran.
Hadi Moussavi Nik, the former general director for Social Welfare Studies at the Labor Ministry, said 57% of the Iranian population is malnourished as they do not receive the minimum 2100 calories per day designated by the World Bank for refugees in refugee camps.
Moussavi Nik said, “Over 14.5 million of these people are children, with nearly 10 million under 12 years of age.”
The remarks by Moussavi Nik were published by the semi-official 90eghtesadi.com on Monday, July 10, 2023. It was not clear, however, where he had made the speech.
The statistics provided by this former official are way beyond the previous announcements.
In November 2022, the Iranian Health Ministry put the number of malnourished kids at 800,000, constituting 15% of Iranian children.
The feminine face of poverty and malnourishment
The vast majority of the people of Iran are malnourished. They do not have access to sufficient nutritious food they need. Because not only the basic staples but almost all food items are beyond people’s purchasing power.
For a long time, dairy products, legumes, eggs, poultry, and bread have become a luxury for most Iranian families. They do not afford to buy proteins, including red or white meat.
There is a feminine face to poverty in Iran because of vicious discrimination against women in the job market. More than 64% of impoverished families in Iran are female heads of households. 50% of panhandlers in Iran are also women.
Many basic food staples have been removed from people’s food baskets because of low salaries, inflation, and high prices. The consumption of red meat has decreased by 65% and rice by 34%.
30M poverty line
With the poverty line at 30 million Tomans nowadays, even families with two working members are still under the poverty line.
The 2023 minimum wage for single workers without job experience is 7.3 million Tomans and 8.5 million Tomans for married workers with two children. With only a 21% increase compared to the previous year, these salaries provide for only one-third of a family’s expenditures. (The state-run ILNA news agency, June 18, 2023)
The Labor Ministry announced last year that one-third of the Iranian population lives under the poverty line. The Research Center of the mullahs’ Parliament recently reported that 30% of the population lives under the poverty line.
The official inflation rate in Iran is 63%. Mohammad Bagheri, a member of the parliamentary Economic Commission, says the poverty line in Tehran stands at 30 million Tomans.
According to ILNA, the poverty line in other cities is 24 million, so even families with two working members cannot afford to pay their minimum expenses.
A member of the Supreme Labor Council recently criticized Raisi’s government and said Iranian workers and their families feel an inflation rate of 70 to 100 percent in Spring 2023.
The reality is much worse than the official figures
Shahab Naderi, a member of the parliament in 2017, revealed that 80% of Iranian society lives below the poverty line. (The state-run Khane Melat news agency, March 13, 2017)
In 2017, the Iranian population was 83 million. So, 80% of that amounts to 66 million people.
Iranian people have become highly poorer due to a complete economic collapse during the past six years.
The middle class has all but diminished, and the vast majority of the Iranian people live in poverty despite the country’s immense national wealth and oil reserves.
