Many provinces in the pension insurance industry cannot cover their expenditures after reforming for 18 years. Why is there not enough money to spend? Core tip: The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will take multiple measures to enhance the support capacity of the fund.

Continue to increase the collection and collection of social insurance coverage; improve the level of co-ordination and implement national co-ordination of basic pensions; further expand fund-raising channels and start the implementation of pension insurance fund investment operations.

In addition, measures such as increasing financial subsidies and allocating state-owned assets to replenish social security funds will be adopted to enhance financing capabilities.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will take multiple measures to enhance the fund’s support capacity.

Continue to increase the collection and collection of social insurance coverage; improve the level of co-ordination and implement national co-ordination of basic pensions; further expand fund-raising channels and start the implementation of pension insurance fund investment operations.

In addition, measures such as increasing financial subsidies and allocating state-owned assets to replenish social security funds will be adopted to enhance financing capabilities.

Implement a progressive policy of delaying the retirement age; develop a multi-level pension insurance system and promote the development of enterprise annuities and occupational annuities.

A new round of pension insurance reform is slowly opening.

According to the timetable set by this year's National "Two Sessions", the national unified plan for employee pension insurance will be released within the year; the delayed retirement plan will be formulated this year, reported next year, and officially launched in 2017; in addition, the pension investment and operation plan has been released, and the integration of government agencies and institutions

, the merger of urban and rural residents’ pension insurance and other three plans. These five reforms constitute the framework for the future reform of China’s pension insurance system.

Hu Jiye, a professor at the Law and Economic Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, regards this package of reforms as a new stage of China’s pension insurance reform since the 1990s.

However, since my country formally established the pension insurance system that combines accounting and accounting in 1997, last year there was a situation where the current payment revenue was not enough to cover the expenses. And based on last year’s expenditure of 1.9 trillion, if no new funds are injected into the pool, the current 3.5 trillion will be The stock of trillions of pension funds will be exhausted in more than ten years.

In 2004, due to the restructuring of local state-owned enterprises, Li Li (pseudonym) was laid off from the silk reeling factory where she had worked for 16 years and found another job in a private enterprise.

She only remembered that she received a social insurance policy when she retired, but she couldn't figure out how much money she would be able to withdraw from it when she retired.

Li Li is just one individual in the wave of institutional transformation, but she is by no means the only one who doesn’t know how to settle this score.

In the 1990s, due to the economic restructuring that led to the collapse of a large number of state-owned enterprises, the so-called "work units" no longer existed, and the original system that relied on work unit security was unsustainable. The pension insurance system was switched from work unit security to social security, and thus established

Our country’s system combines social pooling and personal accounts (referred to as pooling and accounting).

Zheng Bingwen, director of the World Social Security Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, summarized the reasons for the establishment of the current system in the article "Current Situation, Problems and Solutions for China's Inflation-Based Pension Insurance" as "the reform of state-owned enterprises gave birth to the birth of China's social security system."

At that time, the three-pillar model of pension insurance was established through the introduction of individual contributions; and through two subsequent documents in 1995 and 1997, a unified account-based combined system of 20% paid by the unit and 8% paid by individuals was formally established.

In accordance with the expected goals of system design, the social pooling part is to reflect fairness and implement a pay-as-you-go system; the personal account part is to reflect incentives and implement an accumulation system.

"A pension insurance system has not reached its goal after 20 years of operation." Zheng Bingwen commented in an interview with a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald that because the shadow of personal accounts cannot be seen, the actual personal accounts have become part of social planning.

To a certain extent, the employee pension insurance system established by the reform of state-owned enterprises is less adaptable to non-state-owned sectors such as private enterprises that later joined the system, as well as to migrant workers who are in a state of migration.

How big is the invisible gap?

Li Li also fell into confusion when she was about to retire: the company and herself had already paid pension insurance, and everyone was saying that the government would subsidize the pension insurance every year. In this case, why is there still a funding gap from time to time?

Information from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security’s bulletin shows that since the establishment of the unified accounting system in 1997, the national finance has begun to subsidize pension insurance, from 200 million that year, to 16.8 billion in 1999, to 115.7 billion in 2007, and as of 2014

In the past 18 years, fiscal authorities at all levels have subsidized nearly 2.2 trillion yuan for pension insurance.

On the other hand, in terms of account balances, as of the end of 2014, the stock of basic pension insurance funds for urban employees was 3.18 trillion yuan, and the stock of basic pension insurance funds for urban and rural residents was 384.5 billion yuan, a total of about 3.5 trillion.

The overall balance seems to be large, but judging from the current income and expenditure, the turning point has actually appeared in 2014, and the current pension income and expenditure are in deficit for the first time (for details, please see the 21st Century Business Herald, November 19, Page 5, "Pension Annual Income and Expenditure is in Deficit"

, without reform, the balance will be exhausted after more than ten years").

This indicates that the current revenue and expenditure channels have been exhausted and it is relying on part of the existing funds to operate.

However, what worries scholars even more is the hidden debt issue beyond pension accounts.