The Iranian Kurds are better off than their cousins in Turkey. Land reforms since 1960 have allowed roughly a third of them to buy their first plots of land. However, they are still culturally repressed. For example, Kurdish, the language of the Northern Kurds, has been banned in Iran since the 1940's, and all school children have been forced to study Persian. Iranian schools are ill equipped and there are not nearly enough of them.
Medical care is inadequate in the towns and almost non-existent in the rural areas.
There is also constant hostility between the Sunni Muslim Kurds in the north and the Shiite Muslim Kurds farther south. Large families are still the norm for Kurds. Each household usually has five or six members. Massive migration to the cities has also contributed to the extinction of a tribal society. Nearly all the Kurds are Muslim, most being Shafiite Sunnis .