The Russians were offered to increase social pensions from April: to whom and by how much

The Ministry of Labor proposes to increase social pensions from April 1 by 3.3%. The draft of the relevant resolution is published on the official Internet portal of legal information. It is currently under public comment. If the initiative is approved, then, as noted in the ministry, this will be the second indexation in a year. The last time the authorities raised the social pension immediately by 10% was in June last year. Whether the new indexation will be fair and whether the Russian budget will cope with such obligations, MK found out from experts.

A social pension is a type of monthly cash payment financed from the state budget, which is established for the elderly and persons who, for some reason, have not acquired the right to an insurance pension. Its indexation in our country is carried out, as a rule, twice a year. Traditionally, one of the dates for increasing payments is April 1.

The law provides for the following types of social pensions:

• Disability (for disabled people of groups 1, 2, 3, disabled since childhood, disabled children);

• in connection with the loss of a breadwinner (assigned to children under 18 years of age, and if they are studying full-time, then up to 23 years of age, who have lost one or both parents, and to children of a deceased single mother);

• representatives of indigenous peoples of the North aged 55 for men and 50 for women;

• by old age (appointed to citizens who have reached the age of 70 for men and 65 for women, subject to transitional provisions, who are not entitled to an insurance pension). This category includes people without work experience who have never officially worked for various reasons. For example, these are citizens who received income from renting their own real estate or dividend income from shares, housewives, people who were in prison for a long time, etc.

It seems that the increase in social benefits by 3.3% looks modest. However, if we remember that this is the second indexation in the last 11 months, we will get an increase that exceeds the inflation rate. “From June 1, 2022, the cost of living, the minimum wage, insurance and social pensions were indexed by 10% on behalf of the president,” said Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection, Secretary of State Andrey Pudov. – Since January 1, the cost of living has increased by another 3.3%. From April 1, by analogy with the subsistence minimum, social pensions will increase by 3.3%, which increase annually in line with the growth of the subsistence minimum.” Thus, social pensions increase by 13.6% over the year. This is almost 2% more than the official inflation rate, which in 2022, according to Rosstat, was 11.9%.

As the associate professor of the Russian University of Economics named after G.V. Plekhanova Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, as of January 2022, the number of pensioners receiving a social pension amounted to about 3.3 million people. If we add citizens from the new territories of Russia to them, then it is fair to say that this measure will affect almost 4 million recipients of payments, which is less than 10th of the total number of pensioners in Russia.

Until the end of 2023, 15.57 billion rubles will be allocated from the state budget for the indexation of social pensions. According to Alexander Safonov, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, this is not a lot of money for the state treasury. “But if we correlate this figure with the budget deficit, and at the end of January it amounted to 1.76 trillion rubles, then such expenses can be assessed as quite tangible,” believes Elena Grigoryeva, Deputy Dean for Research at the RUDN Faculty of Economics, for her part.

The average social pension is 12,125.2 rubles, while for working pensioners it is less and equals an average of 8,992.9 rubles. For comparison, the average old-age insurance pension is 20,678.5 rubles. At the same time, in accordance with the law, from January 1, 2023, the cost of living for pensioners in Russia has been increased by 3.3%, to 12,363 rubles. Thus, the provision of the law on pension provision is implemented, according to which the social pension should be equal to the subsistence level of the pensioner. Since social pensions are paid to those who, for some reason, have not gained the necessary work experience or have not worked at all, the state is bringing the social pension to the subsistence level. If social pensions are raised even more, this may negatively affect the motivation of people to earn an insurance pension. As can be seen from the figures, the gap between the social pension and the average old-age pension is only 8.3 thousand rubles. Therefore, it is more fair to raise insurance pensions at a faster pace here, Safonov believes.