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Under Russia's proposed pension reforms, millions more won’t live to collect retirement payments

Source: RBC

Using the Human Mortality Database and Rosstat’s predicted mortality rates, the Higher School of Economics has weighed the human costs of Russia’s planned pension reforms, predicting that 17.4 percent of men and 6.5 percent of women won’t live to collect retirement payments, once the government raises Russia’s retirement ages.

On June 14, on Day One of the FIFA World Cup, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced massive changes coming to Russia’s pension system: the retirement age will start rising gradually next year, growing from 55 to 63 for women and from 60 to 65 for men.

Among Russian men born in 1959, who can retire at 61, the likelihood that they’ll live to collect their pensions is 95.8 percent. The likelihood that men born in 1963, who can’t retire until 65, will live to collect their pensions is just 82.6 percent. The chances of women born in 1964 reaching their retirement age of 56 is 98.9 percent. Women who can’t retire until the age of 63, however, are only expected to survive long enough to collect their pensions 93.5 percent of the time.

Russia’s two largest labor unions have announced protests against the planned pension reforms, and the anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny is calling on his supporters to stage demonstrations in more than a dozen cities on July 1.

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