The population of the capital city Tehran has increased by 6.6% over five years from the fiscal year ending March 2013 to the year ending March 2017.
The Statistical Center of Iran estimated that 8,693,706 people and 2,903,435 households lived in Tehran in the year ending March 2017.
District Four was the most populous with 919,001 people (accounting for 10.6% of the city’s total population) and District Nine was the least populous with 174,239 people (2%).
Of the 8,693,706 people living in Tehran, 17.4% were between 0 and 14 years old, 74.1% were between 15 and 64 years old, and 8.4% were 65 years or older.
District 19 with 23.5% of its population between the age of 0 and 14 was the youngest and District Three with 15% of its population above 65 years was the oldest neighborhood in Tehran.
The size of household reduced by 0.1 people to stand at 3 members per household in the year ending March 2017 compared with the year ending March 2012.
Districts 19 and Seven with 3.3 and 2.7 members per household had the largest and smallest average household size among other districts.
Of the 2,903,435 Tehrani households, 84.2% (or 2,445,016 households) had male breadwinners and 15.8% (or 458,419 households) had female breadwinners, suggesting that one out of six households had women as the head of the family.
District Seven had the largest and Districts 19 and 20 had the smallest number of women as the head of household with 22.3% and 10%, respectively.
The relative frequency of households with women as the head has increased 0.4% from 15.4% to 15.8% over five years.
New migrants (those who moved to Tehran from March 2012-17) accounted for 4.7% or 404,996 people of Tehran’s population in the year ending March 2017.
District Six has the largest number of migrants with 10.8% and District 16 has the smallest number of migrants with 2.5%.
The findings of the National Population and Housing Census also show 94.8% or 7,638,837 of people living in Tehran were literate and 5.1% or 414,162 were illiterate in the year ending March 2017. The highest level of illiteracy was recorded for District 17 with 10.4% and District 19 with 10.2%, while the lowest level of illiteracy was registered for District Three with 1.8% and District Six with 1.9%.
Out of 2,888,713 households living in apartments or houses in the city, 1,432,136 (49.6%) were the owners of residential units and 1,208,710 households (41.8%) were renters.
About 87.4% of the residential units in Tehran in the year ending March 2017 were apartments and 12.7% were properties other than apartments. District Six had the highest number of apartments (96.7% of the total number of residential units) and District 16 had the smallest number of apartments (70.6% of the total).
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest Cost of Living report comparing the cost of living in 133 cities shows Tehran ranks 106th among most expensive cities in the world.
The ranking has climbed 14 places, meaning the cost of living has increased in the Iranian capital compared to other cities under review.
Hong Kong, Singapore and Osaka are joint leaders on EIU's 2020 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey. The Japanese city of Osaka has replaced Paris, making the all-Asian trio the top three most expensive cities in the world.
The biannual survey, which evaluates the cost of over 160 goods and services in 133 cities around the world, has been carried out for more than 30 years.
Migration to Suburban Areas
Residents of the capital city, Tehran, are increasingly migrating to suburban areas, according to Deputy Interior Minister Mehdi Jamalinejad.
"Unfortunately, we suffer from the so-called 'metropolitan inundation syndrome' as a result of mass migrations from villages to cities, and from smaller cities to metropolises," he was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
"These migrations reached a peak in 2001-11," he added.
Citing data gathered in the latest National Population and Housing Census of the fiscal 2016-17, the official said Tehran is presently experiencing reverse migration.
Tehran continues to face many challenges, including air pollution and traffic to name a few. Due to its political, economic, educational and other advantages, the capital city has always attracted Iranians from other provinces.
Migration to Tehran to work, study, or live temporarily or permanently has become a commonplace phenomenon over the years leading to the growth in the city's population and a worsening of environmental issues.
However, statistics also reveal the parallel case of reverse migration, i.e. from Tehran to other provinces.
According to the Statistical Center of Iran, the latest census shows a total of 350,632 people migrated from Tehran to other provinces between the fiscal 2011-12 and 2016-17. The provinces of Alborz, Gilan and Mazandaran were the top destinations of migrants from Tehran.
A total of 516,922 people migrated to Tehran during the same period and a majority came from Alborz, Lorestan, Hamedan and Khorasan Razavi provinces.
Tehran's population density is at 969 per square kilometers, which is 20 times higher than the national average. With a population of about 13.26 million people (up from 8.15 million registered in the previous census conducted in 2011-12), the capital city has a 16.5% share in Iran’s total population. The city is home to 41.9% of the country’s urban population, according to the latest census.
Although the number of people coming to Tehran surpassed those who leave the city during the period under review, reverse migration is seemingly on the rise amid growing environmental problems in the capital city and saturation of opportunities there.
In fact, air pollution and fear of earthquake have been cited as the main reasons for people wanting to leave Tehran.
