Due to the difficult demographic situation in Russia, the number of pensioners is increasing every year in comparison with other categories of the population. This causes debate both in the government and in society about the need to raise the retirement age.
The current retirement age was established back in the thirties and has not been revised since then. However, since that time, the age composition of society has changed a lot. Life expectancy has increased significantly, with women approaching 75 years. At the same time, the population has aged significantly. The average age of a Russian is over 35 years old. All these conditions in the long term may lead to a crisis of the pension system in a situation when there are too few workers per pensioner.
Raising the retirement age is proposed as one of the ways to solve the current and future problems of the pension fund. This is justified, in particular, by the fact that in Russia it is one of the lowest in the world. At the same time, the life expectancy of women corresponds to the standard of developed countries, although it lags behind Japan and the United States. There remains the problem of early mortality among men, whose life expectancy barely reaches 61 years. However, you need to understand that this is largely due not to the early mortality of pensioners, but to the death of men from alcoholism, illnesses and various injuries that have not been identified in time, long before leaving for a well-deserved rest.
Former Finance Minister Kudrin was one of the first to speak about the need to raise the retirement age. However, then the government did not support him. On the eve of the 2011-2012 elections, the President and Prime Minister announced that they are going to solve the problem of the deficit in the Pension Fund without raising the retirement age. However, these words can be considered very difficult to fulfill pre-election promises. A program of action was never proposed that could maintain the current order of retirement. In neighboring Ukraine, a little earlier it was decided that the retirement age for women would be increased to 60 years by 2012. It can be assumed that Russian statesmen will also come to a similar decision sooner or later.
