First results: the Pension Fund gets rid of the money deficit due to the loss of pensioners

As Novye Izvestia has already reported with reference to Rosstat data, from January 1, 2019 to April 1, 2021, the number of pensioners in the Russian Federation decreased from 43.865 million to 42.598 million people - minus 1.276 million people - this is the maximum in the entire history of available statistics since 1998 of the year.

Moreover, 75% of this reduction fell on the period from July 1, 2020 to early April 2021 - minus 956 thousand people. In annual terms, this reduced the expenses of the Pension Fund for payments by 240 billion rubles (an average pension of 15,778 rubles).

If it were only a matter of pension reform, the number of pensioners would ehave to be reduced by about 300 thousand a year, according to the Pension Fund itself. And it shrinks much faster.

Popular blogger Vladimir Stechkin is sure that the "state plan to reduce the number of pensioners" worked, since the meaning of the law on raising the retirement age in Russia, adopted in 2018, pursued exclusively economic goals: to prevent the budget deficit of the Russian pension fund by all means.

As a matter of fact, these goals could be achieved only in two ways: either by increasing government investment in the pension fund, or by reducing the number of pensioners. The country's authorities chose the second one.

Stechkin publishes charts based on official figures that prove that this particular plan worked.

Both of them clearly demonstrate how after 2019 (when the law came into force) the number of pensioners began to decrease.

As for the reasons for this rapid reduction, the first is extremely simple: the deadline for receiving a pension has been postponed.

But the second is more significant: many simply do not live up to retirement, since mortality in Russia is higher than in developed countries, including those where retirement is also retired at 65 years of age.

Well, and finally, the main reason: the coronavirus pandemic greatly helped to fulfill the plan to reduce pensioners:

It is no secret that citizens of pre-retirement and retirement ages have suffered more from it than others. But the deficit in the Pension Fund has been eliminated.