School enrollment, preprimary, by sex (% gross)_

Event_Log

1. 011974Great Civilization spending surge -- Fifth Plan revisedAssociation

   Following the 1973-74 oil price quadrupling, government oil revenue rises from $5bn to $19bn in a year; the Shah revises the Fifth Development Plan, nearly doubling total planned investment from $36.5bn to $70bn and raising overall government spending from $44bn to $123bn, fueling severe absorptive-capacity bottlenecks and inflation.

   Why this link: Male preprimary gross enrollment rose from 4.6% (1974) to 23.7% (1978), and female from 4.1% to 21.5% over the same four years -- more than a fivefold increase on both series -- tracking the oil-boom-financed expansion of the Fifth Plan's social spending, consistent with the broader 1973-78 education-spending surge visible elsewhere in this database (see the companion tertiary education-expenditure chart).

   Caveat: None substantial -- a four-year window with an unusually smooth, monotonic rise on both gender series is a clean match for a single sustained spending push.

   Lag: immediate, 1974-1978Source: Intereconomics (Naini) -- The Fifth Development Plan
2. 021979Islamic RevolutionAssociation

   Mohammad Reza Shah's government falls; the Islamic Republic is proclaimed under Ayatollah Khomeini on 1 April 1979.

   Why this link: The same enrollment rates collapsed from their 1978 peaks (23.7% male, 21.5% female) to just 5.6% and 5.1% respectively by 1985 -- a roughly 76% relative decline -- as the new government's early social priorities and the revolution's and war's broader resource disruption reversed nearly the entire 1974-78 gain within seven years.

   Caveat: The 1980-1985 window overlaps both the revolution and the opening years of the Iran-Iraq War, so the two shocks cannot be fully separated; the chart's own data has a gap between 1978 and 1982, so the exact shape of the collapse (gradual vs. a single sharp drop) cannot be pinned down more precisely than these two endpoints allow.

   Lag: immediate, 1978-1985Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica