Pension security system reform Since the transformation of the economic system, Russia's pension security system has been reformed in three directions: first, gradually abandoning the state's domination of everything and diversifying the sources of funds for social security; second, addressing the issues of social fairness and efficiency.

On the issue of mutual relations, the focus has shifted from fairness and neglecting efficiency in the past to efficiency and fairness; third, the level of pensions has been continuously improved.

Before 1997, the main contents of reforms in this field were: First, in addition to voluntary pension insurance in Russia, all citizens, enterprises and institutions were required to participate in compulsory pension insurance, and the source of its funds was decoupled from the national budget.

The Russian Federation's extra-budgetary autonomous pension fund comes from three aspects: federal and federal subject budget allocations, insurance units and individuals.

Employers contribute 31.6% of total wages, and employees contribute 5% of wages. Contributions from enterprises and employees generally account for more than 90% of the total fund.

Second, the conditions for receiving pensions are the same as during the Soviet Union: men who are over 60 years old must have worked for no less than 25 years, and women who are over 55 years old must have worked for no less than 20 years.

Due to the high and large changes in the inflation rate, the original long-term unchanged method of calculating pensions is difficult to adapt to the changing situation, and often cannot restrain the decline in the actual level of pensions caused by inflation, thus making pensioners

Minimum living standards are not guaranteed.

Therefore, pensions have been indexed since 1992.

Indexation is mainly calculated based on changes in market prices, the average salary of active employees and the original salary and pension levels of pensioners.

In September 1997, Russia passed the "Procedural Law on the Calculation and Increase of Pensions", which stipulates that from February 1, 1998, the calculation of pensions will no longer be based on price increases, but on the national average monthly salary.

Based on the improvement level, it is also stipulated that individual coefficients should be used to improve pensions.

In 1997, Russia also carried out major reforms to the pension security system with reference to the "three-pillar" model proposed by the World Bank.

The first pillar is social pension insurance, which is limited to providing assistance to extremely poor people who cannot afford pension insurance premiums and is funded by government finance; the second pillar is compulsory pension insurance, which is the most important part of the "three pillars" and its funding

The source comes from the contributions of enterprises and employees and fund income, and was formed through the introduction of a unified social tax in 2001.

This tax combines the original pension funds, social insurance funds, and compulsory medical insurance funds. The unified social tax is levied at 35.6% of total wages.

The introduction of a unified social tax replaced the previously implemented system of paying insurance premiums to state extra-budgetary funds.

The third pillar is supplementary pension insurance, which is a voluntary pension insurance. It is established voluntarily by employers and all employees can voluntarily participate. It adopts a fund-based personal account management method so that employees can purchase supplements on their own in addition to basic living security.

Pension insurance flexibly adjusts post-retirement income.

The number of people with voluntary pension insurance in Russia is very small, with only 1% of working-age residents participating in this insurance.

The reason is that in general, most residents have low income levels and cannot afford additional insurance expenditures; secondly, the return on investment in pension insurance funds is often lower than the return on other investments; in addition, Russia's non-state-owned financial institutions have a poor reputation.

The majority of residents lack trust in it.

Although Russia has carried out many reforms in its pension security system, there is still a large gap between it and international standards.

In addition, while facing the pressure of the continued aging of the population, the national burden is increasing day by day, making the pension security system run in deficit and difficult to maintain with financial subsidies.

In response to the above situation, Russia decided to carry out new reforms to the pension security system starting from January 1, 2010. The essence is to transition to the insurance principle, that is, the pension rights and pension amounts enjoyed by citizens are directly determined by each person's contribution to the pension system.

The purpose of insurance contributions to the national pension fund is to shift pension income from relying on tax revenue to relying on insurance income.

In general, Russia has attached great importance to the reform of the pension security system in the process of economic transformation and has continuously improved the level of pensions. In the eight years from 2000 to 2007, pensions increased by 1.5 times.

In 2012, the average monthly pension in Russia was 9,800 rubles.

There are still many problems in Russia's pension security system. The most prominent one is that although the Russian government has adopted policies such as increasing pension insurance premiums to reduce the national burden, the national finances still face huge pressure.

In 2007, the Russian government's transfer payments for pension security accounted for 1.5% of GDP. By 2010, the proportion of GDP increased to 5.2%, and the entire pension expenditure accounted for approximately 9% of GDP.

Russia has had a pension fund deficit of 87 billion rubles since 2005, and is preparing to alleviate the deficit by raising the retirement age and other measures. It plans to increase the retirement age for male citizens from 60 to 65 years old and from 55 for female citizens after 2015.

to 60 years old.

Secondly, it will be difficult to resolve the contradiction between the increasing proportion of pension funds in GDP on the one hand and the low ratio of average pensions to average wages on the other for quite some time.

The result is increased financial pressure on the country, while retirees are also dissatisfied with the government due to low pensions.

To this end, the Russian government even promised to increase pensions by at least 45% from 2015.