Russia Raises Retirement Age Above Life Expectancy For 40% Of Men

[Swordsmyth]

An estimated 40% of Russians may never live to retire, after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that the age to receive a Russian state pension would be raised from 60 to 65 for men by 2028, and from age 55 to 63 by 2034 for women. The draft legislation was discussed in the Russian cabinet on Thursday. There is one problem: a substantial portion of the Russian population will never live that long.

Angry Russians are accusing the Kremlin of announcing the changes while the country is distracted hosting the World Cup.

Expected to be officially adopted by next year, the new policy would mean the country’s retirement age for men would be only a year lower than the World Health Organisation’s estimated life expectancy for a Russian man of 66.
It estimated around 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women may not live long enough to claim their pensions under the new rules. -Independent.co.uk

The Russian Confederation of Labour (KTR) says that the average life expectancy for men is actually less than 65-years-old in over 60 regions in Russia.

“KTR does not support such decisions and declares its intention to launch a broad public campaign against their implementation,” the organization said in a statement.
According to the Federal State Statistics Service, in 62 regions of the Russian Federation, the average life expectancy of men is less than 65 years, and in three subjects - less than 60 years.
In other words, if demographic trends continue in Russia as a whole, up to 65 years 40% of men and 20% of women will not live to see their retirement. The implementation of the proposal to raise the retirement age will mean that a significant portion of Russian citizens will not survive to retirement.
The Kremlin, however, disagrees - with Russia's Federal Statistics Service projecting men's life expectancy to reach 74-years-old by 2037, according to Bloomberg.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ectancy-40-men

[goldenequity]

This woman is only 37 years old. sad.

[Swordsmyth]

Tens of thousands of Russians took part Saturday in rallies across the country organised by Communists to protest against highly controversial plans to hike the pension age.In Moscow, organisers said up to 100,000 people gathered for a permitted rally against the government-backed reform, which is currently going through parliament. However, reporters put the turnout much lower at around 10,000.
Protests took place in dozens of cities and towns in far eastern Russia, Siberia and western Russia.
Around 1,200 people protested in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, TASS state news agency reported, citing city hall.
Demonstrators in Moscow chanted "Pension-off Putin!" and carried banners with slogans including "We want to live on our pensions and not die at work."

In Russia's second largest city of Saint Petersburg, around 1,000 people took part in a Communist rally, with some waving red flags and holding portraits of Stalin.

The rare show of public opposition to a reform backed by President Vladimir Putin's ruling party has seen 2.9 million sign a protest petition and the often compliant Communist Party vote against it.

Putin, who did not mention the issue ahead of his re-election in March and had previously vowed not to raise the pension age, has seen public trust in his presidency fall to 64 percent this month, down from 80 percent in May, according to VTsIOM state pollster.
"Many believed Putin when he said there would be no pension reform. It turns out that was demagoguery. I'm very disappointed in him," protester Irina Ivanova, 49, told AFP in Saint Petersburg.
The draft law calls for the pension age to be gradually raised to 63 for women and 65 for men, up from the current Soviet-era norms of 55 for women and 60 for men.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/thousands...101541872.html

[goldenequity]

In Belarus... the life expectancy of men is 57 (I'm told).
Biggest factor/problem is alcohol (I'm told) and organ failure/pre-mature aging/death.

[Zippyjuan]

Russia too. https://qz.com/403307/russia-is-quit...self-to-death/

Russia is quite literally drinking itself to death

It’s difficult to overstate how serious Russia’s alcohol problem is.

More than 30% of all deaths in Russia in 2012 were attributable to alcohol, according to WHO data crunched by the OECD. That’s by far the highest among the nations it tracked.

Russian drinkers die a variety of deaths. Alcohol poisoning. Cirrhosis. Accidents. Suicide.

The result? Russians live some of the shortest lives in any large economy. Life expectancy for a Russian man was roughly 65 years in 2012, compared to 76 years for the US and 74 for China.

Part of the reason is cultural. Hard drinking has long been a Russian habit. A paper published in 2013 found that relatively high levels of alcohol-related deaths can be found in Russian data going back to the late 19th century.

But the mortality rate surged amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially among men, largely thanks to more drinking. The economic collapse of the former Soviet republics during the 1990s is unparalleled among major economies since World War II. By some estimates the region’s GDP fell by roughly 40%. The ruble fell 99% against the US dollar (pdf, p. 159) between December 1991 and December 2001. Many turned to alcohol amid economic chaos.

Another reason is low prices. In the 1990s, Russian vodka got very, very cheap. This paper (pdf), published in 2010, argues that real vodka prices plummeted in Russia in the early 1990s, as nascent competition in the industry led to overproduction, excise tax went uncollected (the tax authorities were in disarray) and misguided government policies held vodka prices down amid disastrous inflation. (Keeping vodka cheap was viewed as a political priority.) Daniel Treisman, the political economist behind the paper, writes:

In December 1990, the average Russian monthly income would buy 10 litres of ordinary quality vodka; 4 years later, in December 1994, it would buy almost 47 litres. Initially, vodka became much more affordable because of a dramatic drop in its relative price.

Drinking deaths are only part of the reason that the Russian demographic picture looks so dire. Birth rates are another. In recent years, the working-age population has also begun to decline quickly, weighing on the productive capacity of the economy. Putin’s state has taken action to stabilize Russia’s demographics, including instituting payments for child-bearing. The results are seemingly mixed (pdf, p. 4).

As bleak as things are, they’re not without hope. Policy changes to alcohol licensing and sales laws instituted in 2006 seem to have had some success in decreasing vodka consumption and marginally reducing deaths, at least according to one study. And if official Russian statistics are to be believed, birthrates have bounced up a bit, the population is no longer shrinking, and alcohol-related deaths are on the decline. These claims, though, are pretty controversial, as anything involving Russian official statistics tends to be.

[acptulsa]

Funny to see ZippyFed and Spinsmith openly working the same side of the street.

[Swordsmyth]

Funny to see ZippyFed and Spinsmith openly working the same side of the street.

How is it working on zippy's side of the street to report what is happening?

[DamianTV]

If it is that bad in Russia, how bad is it here? People that work at Walmart are hardly putting into a pension, in fact, many are already retired...