Iranian diaspora

The Iranian diaspora refers to Iranian people or those who are of Iranian ancestry living outside Iran. In 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran published statistics, which showed that 4,037,258 Iranians are living abroad, an increase from previous years. Many of them live in North America, Europe, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Australia and the broader Middle East. Other studies have estimated about 1.5 million or fewer Iranians living abroad. Many of them migrated to other countries after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Nearly 60 percent of Iranians abroad have earned at least an undergraduate degree, and have one of the highest rates of self-employment among immigrant groups. Many have founded their own companies, including Isaac Larian, the founder of MGA Entertainment, and Pierre Omidyar, who founded eBay in 1995 in San Jose, California. Iranian households earn on average $87,288 annually, and are ranked ninth by income in the United States. Higher education in Iran and Iran's brain drain According to the Iranian government, 55,686 Iranian students were studying abroad in 2013: 8,883 studied in Malaysia, 7,341 in the United States, 5,638 in Canada, 3,504 in Germany, 3,364 in Turkey, 3,228 in Britain, and the rest in other countries. The Iranian Ministry of Education estimated that between 350,000 and 500,000 Iranians were studying outside Iran as of 2014.