Methodological issues of the pension statistics

Pension statistics, like other fields of social statistics, suffered greatly as a result of the transition to market relations in the socio-labour sphere and radical sequestration of the ‘soviet’ statistical indicators, and cannot reflect all aspects of the modern social policy. The problems of pension statistics are further aggravated by the pension reforms that permanently require information on the objects of the state pension system under reform. The pension reform of 2015 again roused public interest in the problems of the domestic pension system not only in the professional circle of ‘narrow’ specialists in the pension sphere but also among a wider scientific community. Then followed active discussions and quantitative estimates both of the present condition of the state pension provision and of the socio-economic consequences of the implemented and planned activities. This revealed great differences in the calculation results (often just opposite). Among the main causes of these differences, along with fundamental differences in the methodology of actuarial calculations, the authors accentuate the problems of completeness, accuracy and adequacy of the information statistical database of the pension system. The article provides the first analysis of the methodological problems of pension statistics and proposes measures for solution of these problems.