The Challenges of Unemployment Insurance Welfare Program in Iran

Unemployment Insurance Welfare Program in Iran suffers from several problems including financial problems, lengthy procedure of receiving unemployment benefit for some groups of the insured and the slow exit of the unemployed from the situation of benefit dependency, making the evaluation of this program a necessity. The research which underlies the present paper has applied three kinds of evaluations, namely: need based evaluation, process evaluation, and impact evaluation. Using a qualitative method, in-depth interviews have been carried out with both the unemployment benefit recipients as well as the unemployment insurance staff while related administrative documents and evidence have been reviewed and analyzed. An analysis of the data reveals nine main themes which represent the most important challenges of the program, which are as follows: lengthy administrative process, lack of a comprehensive coverage of all eligible people, abuse of the program (welfare fraud), coercion and abuse by employers, imbalance between the incoming and the outgoing numbers of unemployed people (to and from the unemployment insurance fund), weak re-employment, inconsistency in administrative data and statistics, welfare dependency, and lack of coverage for all needs of the unemployed.