Raising the retirement age in Russia: economic necessity and demographic risks

The increase in the intensity of demographic aging and the decline in the share of working-age population in Russia arouse increasing concern of the country’s leadership. The situation requires urgent reforms to eliminate possible negative consequences associated with the transformation of age structure of the population. As the experience of developed countries shows, the most obvious an, at the same time, ambiguous solution to the problems of imbalance of the labour structure of the population and the financial security of pension systems is to increase the retirement age. The present article investigates the economic and demographic background of raising the retirement age in Russia, considers the arguments of supporters and opponents of the reform in our country. The paper presents a comparative analysis of Russia and Western countries on the most important economic and demographic criteria from the viewpoint of justification of raising the threshold of retirement...