[Marxism] (fwd) Titillation in Tehran

[Les Schaffer]

[ for Einde ]

Ruthless Critic of All that Exists wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Aaron Aarons 
> <aaron at mylists.fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>>> Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:57:48 -0400
>>> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
>>>
>>> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i08/08b02001.htm
>
>>> Two-thirds of Iran's population consists of urbanites between the ages
>>> of 15 and 30.
>> Really? Then there must have been a historically unprecedented baby 
>> boom in Iran for 15 years after the Islamic revolution, Iranians must 
>> have virtually stopped having children after that period, and all 
>> those youth must have moved to the cities! Oh, and there was, 
>> presumably, a massive die-off (or emigration) of people born before 
>> 1978!
>
> Did you even notice the word "urbanites" ??? No, I guess.
>
> Migration of older teenagers and young adults looking for work from
> villages to cities, would explain this perfectly.
>
No, it wouldn't. It clearly says "Two-thirds of  Iran's population", 
i.e. two-thirds of the population of the whole country.

It is true that two thirds of the population are urbanites, but that 
includes all age groups. Just over quarter of the whole population is 
under 15 and about 70% are 15 to 64. Just under 5% are 65 and over.

All this information was available on teh first page I clicked after 
Googling "Iran population". Looking at the bar charts there I would 
estimate that about one-third of the total population is 15-30.

While it may be true that young people tend to congregate in the urban 
areas, even if all the young people in the country congregated in the 
urban areas (absolutely unlikely) they would still only make up a 
maximum of half of the urban population.

Elementary statistics.

Einde O'Callaghan

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