TEHRAN – The National Document for the Elderly will come into force in the next [Iranian calendar] year (March 2023-March 2024), Hesamoddin Allameh, head of the secretariat of the National Council of the Elderly, has announced.

The Document thoroughly focuses on various aspects of the elderly’s lives by meeting six prime objectives of income and livelihood, health, training, and employment, building an empowering environment, promoting the cultural level of society in the field of aging, and developing the infrastructure required for aging, he explained.

The document focuses on various aspects of the elderly’s lives by meeting their needs to income and livelihood, health, training, and employment. According to this document, it is necessary to see the duties of the devices in relation to aging in future budgets.

For implementing the National Document for the Elderly, at least a hundredfold increase in the aging budget is required, Allameh said.

Referring to a fivefold increase in the National Document for the Elderly, he stated that in the current year’s budget bill, a sum of 500 billion rials (about $2 million) has been proposed.

A total of 100 billion rials (nearly $400,000) has been proposed to implement the document, he stated.

The population of senior citizens currently exceeds 8.8 million in Iran, constituting less than 10 percent of the whole population, and the annual growth rate of the country's aging population is about 3.8 percent, Hassan Salmannejad, head of the secretariat of the National Council for the Elderly, said in December 2018.

The 2011 census observed a significant demographic change in the elderly population of Iran (the percentage of the elderly population increased from 7.27 to 8.20 percent from 2006 to 2011, and to 8.65 percent in 2016). The aging population is predicted to rise to 10.5 percent in 2025 and to 21.7 percent in 2050.

Mohammad Esmaeil Akbari, the senior advisor to the minister of health, has said that the world has grown about 5 years older over the past 70 years, but the population of Iran has unfortunately grown 10 years older in the past 60 years.
“In the next 20 years, we will be one of the oldest countries in the world and the oldest by the next 30 years,” he explained.

Although the increase in the number of old persons in any country indicates an increase in life expectancy, the elderly’s population growth needs more welfare and social institutions, which affects the policies and capacities of the country.

FB/MG