The Pathology of Financial Misalignment in Iran\'s Pension System Considering Emerging Diseases and Population Aging Phenomenon

Abstract

Today, the share of government aid from the public expenditures to support military and civil servants' pension funds has increased from about 11% in 2013 to 19% in 2021 and this trend has been increasing in recent years. This study aims to use DSGE models to simulate and apply corrective measures to enhance the financial misalignment of Iran's pension system. For this purpose, the model has been calibrated once for the PAYG-DB system that is currently used in Iran and then for the system based on financial provision based on the amount of partial savings to compare their welfare and distributional effects. The simulation results show that people reduce their savings by switching to a partial savings system, which increases consumption in all generations and capital accumulation in the whole society. In the second part of the article, impulse response functions were used to investigate the effects of emerging diseases and population aging variables on the financial misalignment of pension funds. The results show that the financial misalignment of pension funds increases following the positive shock in the above variables. Based on the results, parametric reforms such as a mechanism linking the retirement age to life expectancy and transition to a partial savings system can reduce financial misalignment and increase financial sustainability in Iran's pension system.

Keywords

• pension system
• dsge model
• emerging diseases
• population aging
• impulse response functions