Iran's Third Development Plan: A reappraisal

Iran, growth, Development Plan

Revolution and redistribution in Iran: poverty and inequality 25 years later

Despite nearly three decades of revolutionary government rule in Iran poverty and inequality remain the central issues of political debate in Iran. Public dissatisfaction, as demonstrated by the electoral success of the populist candidate in the 2005 presidential election, has been widely attributed to rising poverty and inequity. In this paper I use household survey data to describe the trends in poverty and inequality for the last three decades. The evidence shows that poverty, having substantially declined in recent years, is quite low by international standards and in comparison to pre-revolution years. Inequality improved significantly immediately after the Revolution but has remained relatively stable during the last 15 years. Significantly, poverty sharply declined and inequality decreased somewhat in the five years leading up to the election. Increased welfare of the poor over the period is also evident in access to basic services, such as electricity and safe water, as well as in ownership of household appliances. The wide gap between the evidence presented here, which shows improvement in the welfare of the poor, and popular sentiments in Iran, which indicate worsening poverty and inequality, raises important questions about the political economy of redistribution in Iran. I suggest that in the context of a distributive economy such as Iran's, in which wealth accumulation is seen to depend more on political access than individual productivity, more subjective feelings of envy and fairness may matter more than objective indicators of poverty and inequality.Iran, Poverty, Inequality, Redistribution

Demographic Swings and Early Childhood Education in Iran

In recent years Iran has greatly expanded its early childhood education program, taking first place in the Middle East in preschool enrolment. In this paper we examine the reasons for the unusual expansion and argue that it is in large part an institutional response to demographic changes in Iran, notably the sharp fertility decline of the 1990s. Fertility declined from more than 6 births per woman in the 1980s to about 2 in 2004, while during the same period kindergarten enrollments increased from less than 10 percent of 5 year old children to nearly one half of the population. Economists usually think of the effect of the reduction in fertility on child schooling in terms of a trade-off between quantity and quality. In their models both fertility decline and rising investment in child education are attributed to choices made by families to substitute quality for quantity of children. In the case of Iran, expansion of pre-school education appears to have an institutional explanation. In the early 1990s, following the decline in primary school enrolments in early 1990s, itself caused by fertility decline a few years earlier, caused a surplus of primary school teachers. In an attempt to preserve primary school teachers’ jobs, public schools worked together with parents to set up kindergarten classes in public schools, even though pre-primary education was not part of their official mandate.Iran demographic swings; childhood education

Implications of Sustained Low Oil Prices on Iran

In light of pending negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 we thought you would be interested in the latest issue brief from the Center on Global Energy Policy on the relative impact of low oil prices compared to sanctions on Iran's economy. In it, co-authors Richard Nephew, the Center's Program Director for Economic Statecraft, Sanctions and Energy Markets, and Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Professor of Economics at Virginia Tech, find that sanctions relief is essential to Iranian economic recovery, even more so than a rebound in the price of oil