Iran is most famous for its extremely repressive government, and there is a perception that Iranians have high human capital. So I wanted to see how their development outcomes compare to nearby countries with similar GDP per capita in the region.
Jordan and Egypt are the comparison group. They are both slightly poorer. All data is from WB unless otherwise stated.
Life expectancy
Iran: 73.9
Jordan: 74.3
Egypt: 70.2
Infant Mortality
Iran: 10
Jordan: 12
Egypt: 16
Literacy Rate
Iran: 89
Jordan: 98
Egypt: 75
I wondered whether the low literacy rate in Iran is because of Iran-specific female seclusion so I looked it up.
Male Literacy Rate
Iran: 93
Jordan: 99
Egypt: 80
Ok, they look somewhat better, but this just tells me that Jordan is impressive and that Egypt is a shithole.
Male Labor force participation
Iran: 71
Jordan: 63
Egypt: 71
This time Jordan is worse than the others.
I also looked at female labor force participation. Unsurprisingly all three are in the bottom seven.
They are close in terms of HDI with Iran topping and Egypt bottoming.
Iran seems to have an IQ score of 80 using a dubious website, Jordan is 5 points higher, and Egypt is 5 points lower, all in all, looks about average for that region of the world.
Conclusion
It looks to me that Iran doesn't look particularly impressive. The perception is probably fuelled by the impressive diaspora (more than a quarter of Iranian Americans have Master's degrees or higher).
