The Social Fund predicts an increase in the number of pensioners by 1.1 million in 2023

In 2023, the number of pensioners in Russia will increase by 1.13 million people, and in the next year, 2024, there will be 568.5 thousand more of them. This follows from the draft budget of the Social Fund for 2024 and the planning period of 2025 and 2026 , which leads RBC. The growth in the number of pensioners is largely due to the inclusion of new regions into Russia.

Over two years, the number of pensioners receiving pensions through the territorial bodies of the Social Fund will increase from 41.78 million to 43.47 million people. This is the maximum since 2019. As RBC notes, the number of pensioners will show positive dynamics for the first time since 2018.

Since 2019, Russia has begun a gradual increase in the retirement age after the adoption of pension reform. The number of retirees continued to decline in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the number of pensioners decreased by almost 1 million people – this is an anti-record since the early 1990s. At the end of 2022, there were 232 thousand fewer pensioners.

The Ministry of Labor explained that the increase in the number of pensioners is also due to the inclusion of citizens in the four annexed regions (in which, as experts note, there is a high percentage of the elderly population), as well as planned shifts in the retirement age. Pensions for residents of the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions according to Russian standards are assigned from March 1, 2023.

Through the bodies of the Social Fund, state pension pensioners (former officials), as well as military pensioners, receive insurance pensions (old age, disability and survivor pensions).

Of the 1.13 million new pensioners in 2023, the majority (1.05 million people) will receive insurance pensions. The number of recipients of such pensions will increase to 38.93 million people. In 2024, out of 569 thousand citizens who will be assigned a pension, 496 thousand will apply for insurance.

Social pensions (they are received in the absence of sufficient work experience for insurance) will be assigned to 55.6 thousand people in 2023 and 56.5 thousand in 2024. The number of state pensioners will increase by 69.4 thousand and 72 thousand, respectively. The number of military pensioners will increase by 0.4 thousand per year (up to 781 thousand people), excluding pensioners of the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Investigative Committee and other law enforcement agencies.

As RBC previously wrote with reference to calculations by the Ministry of Labor, by mid-2023, 440 thousand people have been assigned pensions in new regions. Approximately 300 thousand more are awaiting applications.

Of the 1.1 million new pensioners this year, approximately 700 thousand people will be from new regions, Alexander Safonov, a professor at the Government Financial University, agrees with the statistics. According to him, there was no increase in the retirement age in Ukraine. For residents of new regions, the transition period of Russian pension reform will begin next year. In addition, the expert notes, the military operation could lead to an increase in the number of disabled people receiving insurance pensions.

Read about how raising the retirement age added 1.7 million people to the Russian labor market “And it should be built by the elderly”.