Pension Systems in Iranian Social Security Organization and Some Selected Countries: A Comparative Review

Pension systems have vital role in provision of earnings of many elderlies and other pensioners in many countries worldwide. In spite of usual similarities between these systems, they have their own characteristics in different countries. There are valuable lessons to be learned from other countries’ pension systems and their experiences of retirement-income reforms. Iranian Social Security Organization (SSO) has only an occupational-based mandatory pension scheme. As a matter of fact, low retirement age, high accrual rate and relatively high generosity (high net pension replacement rate for pensioner and his/her legal survivors) have increased the long-term liabilities of SSO’s pension system which can jeopardize its sustainability in the long-run. Regarding the type of system (DB-PAYG) and from an intergenerational justice perspective, running both parametric (e.g. rising retirement age, benefit calculation formula( and non-parametric reforms seems to be inevitable.