Demography: Pros and Cons of Raising the Retirement Age

Demographic aging has placed on the agenda of all developed countries the question of adapting existing pension systems to a new age structure, in particular, to the growing proportion of older people in the population. The authors emphasize that changes in the age structure leading to demographic aging result not only in an increase in the old age dependency ratio due to a rise in the share of the elderly, but also in a reduction in the child dependency ratio as a result of a decline in the proportion of children; thus, from the point of view of society as a whole, what matters are the dynamics of the total dependency ratio, which may even decrease. One of the main ways of adapting to the growth in the number and proportion of the elderly now, on the heels of many other countries, being pursued also by Russia, has been to raise the official retirement age. The article analyzes the question of how prepared, from a demographic point of view, Russia is to follow this path at present. The authors conclude that due to the long lag behind most developed countries in reducing mortality, Russia is objectively not ready for raising the retirement age, especially for men. While in Western countries such an increase, as a rule, does not lead to a reduction in the number of years of life in retirement, for Russian men such a reduction is almost inevitable. For Russian women, who now have an almost uniquely low retirement age, its raising will be less painful.