PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The establishment of the pension system has had some consequences for Iranian society. This study, however, focuses on the framing power of the pension system in the emergence of a new life course for Iranians as retirees. With the implementation of the pension system, the traditional model of working until death or as long as physical ability allows has changed to working until the age of retirement. Taking this transition into consideration, this study investigates retirement as an ‘institution’ in terms of all rules and regulations related to the shift from the work to non-work phase during the later stages of life. By applying a historical and institutional analysis, we begin with the first retirement law, which was replicated from foreign countries in 1922 for the public sector employees. The first group of workers in the private sector was included in pension schemes one decade later. The main institutional change in retirement occurred in the 1970s when the early retirement plans took dominance in Iran and continues to this day. This institutional change is not related to the old-age protection, however, it is more advocated on the political and economic ground.

With an increasing number of retirees, especially through early retirement plans, we can see that people are withdrawing from work much earlier than before, at least since 2006. The findings from the individual case study of Iran are also contextualized in the international experiences of retirement. This comparative study shows that the Iranian retirement trend is not unique and to some extent occurs in other countries, especially in middle-income countries in terms of timing and policies for its provisions. In conclusion, I argue that the implementation of the retirement institution in Iran over the last century has not been very successful in achieving the aim of old-age protection nor the purposes of early retirement plans. This institution is also unequally implemented for the middle-aged groups rather than the elderly. Today, this Bismarkian social insurance model is vastly used and is the main social policy program for Iranians, though it is financially very unstable.