Nowruz Under Oppression: A Nation Struggling to Survive
The arrival of the New Year and spring should bring renewal and hope, but for millions in Iran, Nowruz has become a painful reminder of deepening poverty and injustice. The joy of traditional New Year shopping has faded, and once-abundant holiday feasts have been reduced to bare necessities. Millions of working families—teachers, nurses, laborers, and retirees—can no longer afford even the basics for survival. What was once considered a modest yet stable standard of living has now become an impossible dream.
This is not a natural crisis; it is the direct result of decades of plundering, repressive economic policies, and systematic corruption under the Islamic Republic. Wages have been deliberately kept at starvation levels, forcing workers into a relentless cycle of poverty and despair. According to reports from the Joint Statement of Independent Organizations on the Minimum Wage for 1404 (2025), the monthly cost of living for an urban household will exceed 60 million tomans. Yet, the government-mandated minimum wage will not even cover a few days of expenses. These policies are not just failures of governance; they are a deliberate strategy to deepen absolute poverty and widen inequality, keeping millions struggling for survival while wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a corrupt elite.
These conditions reveal that families who, just a few years ago, had hoped to sustain a basic livelihood are now crushed under the weight of unbearable living costs. Nurses sleep in their cars because they cannot afford rent. Workers, after decades of exhausting labor, are left with nothing but hunger and destitution in retirement. Parents, drowning in financial hardship, must make impossible choices daily between rent and food, medicine and their children's education. In the end, many are forced to sacrifice even the most basic necessities of life.
Official data confirms that the approved minimum wage covers less than 30% of a household’s expenses, and with inflation projected to rise further in 1404 (2025), this destructive gap will only widen. But beyond wages, the most fundamental human right, access to food, has become a crisis for millions. Reports from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank indicate that the number of Iranians unable to afford a healthy diet has doubled between 2017 and 2022[1]. A 1401 (2022-2023) study on food insecurity found that 55% of urban residents in Iran are now suffering from food poverty[2]. With the deepening economic collapse of the past two years, this number has undoubtedly risen even further. In 2023, the former Director-General of the Social Welfare Studies Office at the Ministry of Labor confirmed that 57% of Iranians suffer from malnutrition, and over 14 million children do not receive adequate nutrition. This is not just a sign of rising poverty; this is a calculated deprivation of an entire generation, stripping them of their health, growth, and even their basic survival [3].
Studies have repeatedly shown that chronic financial stress takes a devastating toll on cognitive function. Those burdened by constant economic hardship experience a significant decline in their ability to think clearly, concentrate, and make decisions, comparable to losing 13 IQ points or an entire night of sleep deprivation.[4] This means that families fighting to survive are not just struggling financially; they are being systematically drained of the very mental capacity needed to escape poverty. Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is an assault on the mind, a destruction of hope, and a calculated mechanism to trap individuals in a cycle of helplessness and despair. The sharp rise in addiction, child prostitution, and suicide, particularly among children, exposes the brutal reality of this crisis. This is not merely an economic failure; it is a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe deliberately manufactured by a system designed to oppress, exploit, and abandon its most vulnerable.
Amid this social and economic collapse, children stand at a crossroads, their futures stolen before they even have a chance to shape them. Poverty is not just about hunger or lack of healthcare—it deeply wounds a child’s mental and emotional well-being, leaving scars that last a lifetime. Research confirms that early-life poverty disrupts brain development, weakening the very regions responsible for learning, memory, and emotional regulation.[5] Children born into deprivation face irreversible setbacks, struggling with cognitive delays, mental health challenges, and barriers to education, placing them at a permanent disadvantage compared to their peers. This is not an accident; it is a system designed to keep generations trapped in poverty, robbed of opportunity, and silenced by desperation. The soaring rates of depression, substance abuse, and child suicide in Iran are not isolated tragedies; they are the direct and brutal consequences of state-driven neglect and systemic injustice.
For countless children in Iran, poverty is a life sentence to labor. Instead of playing, learning, and dreaming of a future, they are forced into work, stripped of their childhood, and denied their fundamental rights. Reports confirm that a staggering percentage of children from wage-earning families enter the labor market just to help their families survive, sacrificing education, personal growth, and any hope for a better life. According to the Parliament Research Center[6], 15% of Iran’s children are engaged in labor, and 10% do not attend school. The Social Affairs Organization of Iran further reports that 70-80% of child laborers have families, and for 50-60% of them, their earnings are the family’s primary source of income [7]. These children are not just working. They are being exploited, abused, and subjected to inhumane conditions that violate every basic right they should be guaranteed.
Child labor is not an economic necessity; it is state-engineered theft of an entire generation’s future.
Iran’s income levels have collapsed, leaving the country far behind even struggling economies. According to the World Bank, Iran’s gross national income per capita has been cut in half over the past decade [8]. The minimum wage for a worker in 1403 (2024) was 7.1 million tomans, roughly $143 at the exchange rate at the time. Meanwhile, the cost of living for a wage-earner household was estimated at nearly 35 million tomans. Even with the planned wage increase to 10.4 million tomans [9] in 1404 (2025), assuming the dollar stabilizes at 92,000 tomans, the real value of wages will drop to $113, even lower than six months ago. In reality, this wage increase does nothing to restore lost purchasing power, and the crisis is not just ongoing—it is accelerating, driving even more families into deeper poverty.
Workers' organizations have fought relentlessly for years to stop the deliberate erosion of wages and living standards. Their demand is clear: a minimum wage that actually covers the cost of living. Yet, year after year, this demand is dismissed, and even the meager legal minimums are circumvented through manipulative policies, ensuring that labor exploitation remains at its most extreme. Instead of addressing these fundamental grievances, the state has responded with repression, mass layoffs, threats, imprisonment, and fabricated charges, turning a basic demand for survival into grounds for persecution. In this profoundly unjust system, workers have no right to determine the value of their own labor. They are the vast majority, yet their wages are dictated by the privileged few who control capital, industry, and government. While employers, capitalists, and the ruling elite, who make up a tiny fraction of the population, freely inflate the prices of goods and assets to maximize their wealth, workers are forced to accept wages that do not even cover their basic needs.
This deliberate policy keeps workers trapped in a brutal cycle of poverty and exploitation, where even the bare minimum for survival is dictated to them, leaving them with no agency over their own livelihoods. This is not an economic failure. It is a system designed to uphold inequality and crush those who produce the wealth of the nation. Yet the struggle continues. Despite repression and the systematic suppression of demands, a large segment of society remains engaged in a relentless fight for survival and their most basic rights. The absence of independent labor unions and professional organizations representing wage earners has allowed this deprivation to persist. One of the most crucial battles for Iran’s wage earners has been the fight to recognize their demands by establishing and strengthening independent unions, syndicates, and other worker-led organizations.
Now, more than ever, this voice must be amplified. Change will not come from isolated or temporary protests. It will only be achieved through widespread solidarity and unwavering support for demands that are essential to human dignity and the protection of children's rights. This crisis is not just about a single group. It is about the lives and futures of millions.
The question is clear. Will we remain silent and allow this suffering to become the norm, or will we stand with those fighting for change?
A fair wage, a decent livelihood, and a life with dignity are fundamental human rights. Inequality and discrimination strip people of these basic rights. By standing for fair wages and economic justice for workers, teachers, nurses, retirees, and all wage-earners, we can build a future where children are not forced to bear the cost of poverty and exploitation.
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/foodpricesfornutrition
[2] https://eghtesaad24.ir/fa/print/283771
[3] https://www.iranintl.com/202307155485
[4] Mani A, Mullainathan S, Shafir E, Zhao J. Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science. 2013 Aug 30;341(6149):976-80. doi: 10.1126/science.1238041. PMID: 23990553.
[5] Luby J, Belden A, Botteron K, et al. The Effects of Poverty on Childhood Brain Development: The Mediating Effect of Caregiving and Stressful Life Events. JAMA Pediatr. 2013;167(12):1135–1142. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.3139
[6] https://borna.news/fa/print/1504984
[7] https://www.asriran.com/fa/print/979380
