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| 1958 |
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| LAND REFORM and social programs. Among the permanent achievements of the revolution was a large shift in government spending from agricultural projects to urban programs. Expenditures on health, education, and housing all rose rapidly (if taken together, their portion of the budget doubled). The government also imposed controls on prices and ceilings on rents, enormously boosting its popularity among the urban poor. | 1 |
| The most dramatic policy of Qasim's government was LAND REFORM (2 percent of all landowners possessed 68 percent of the land in 1958). In broad outline, Iraqi policy imitated the earlier Egyptian example. The government capped the amount of land an individual could own at 250 hectares for irrigated land and 500 for rain-fed tracts. Owners received compensation for expropriated land (over 1 million hectares by 1964), which was parceled out to peasants in small plots (12 hectares for irrigated land, 23 for rain-fed). As in Egypt, peasants were required to join agricultural cooperatives, but the government originally lacked the means to implement this measure. Later regimes passed further reforms. In 1969–70, ceilings on land ownership were lowered, and compensation was no longer offered. During the following decade, the government encouraged the establishment of collectivized farms. Disillusioned with the results of state farming, policy in the 1980s veered back to support for private cultivation. All state-owned farms were subsequently liquidated (1987). | 2 |
| In the long term, the biggest success of land reform was the massive redistribution of the land. Whereas only 15 percent of the agricultural population had owned land in 1958, the figure had reached 95 percent as early as 1971. Regarding production, however, land reform was a disappointment. An exporter of food in 1958, Iraq was devoting 15 percent of its imports by 1982 to purchases of food. Moreover, agriculture's share of GNP declined from 17 percent (1960) to 8 percent (1980). | 3 |
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| 1958–83 |
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| Doubling of the population, from 7 million to 14 million. During the same period, the percentage of Iraqis residing in towns soared from about 37 percent to 75 percent. Baghdad swelled from 1 million to 4 million inhabitants, and Mosul and Basra each acquired populations of over 1 million. | 4 |
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| 1958–83 |
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| Expansion of the educational system overall registered huge gains. The number of elementary school students rose from 500,000 to 2.6 million. For secondary schools, the figures leaped from 74,000 to 1 million; and for higher education, the number of students increased from 8,500 to over 120,000. By 1980, nearly all eligible Iraqi children attended elementary school, and about 60 percent of them moved on to secondary school. Literacy rates reflected the advances in education, rising from 15 percent (1958) to 50 percent (1977). | 5 |
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| 1958–88 |
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| Expansion of the army. From 1958 to 1974, military spending rose from 7 percent to 19 percent of GNP, and the size of the army grew from 50,000 to 200,000. The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) generated another wave of expansion, and at the close of the war Iraq claimed a regular army of 950,000, supplemented by a popular army of 250,000. | 6 |
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| 1959 |
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| Appointment of Naziha Dulaymi as minister of municipalities. She became the first Arab woman to hold a ministerial position in government. Most Arab countries later adopted the practice of including at least one woman in government cabinets, usually in posts for education, health, and social welfare. | 7 |
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| Dec. 30 |
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| Promulgation of a code of Personal Status that was much more radical than drafts proposed intermittently since 1947. Among its chief provisions were laws improving the status of women, new regulations for marriage and divorce, and reforms of inheritance laws. | 8 |
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