The Institute for Social Policy launched the cycle of academic workshops “Active Ageing Policy and Pension Reforms: Russian and International Experience”
On February 28, 2019, the Institute for Social Policy at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics hosted the first edition focusing on social insurance development of the regular academic workshop “Active Ageing Policy and Pension Reforms: Russian and International Experience”.
The fate of Russian obligatory social insurance system is the permanent topic of the heated expert discussions and the object of various reforms. The most important aspects are pensionary insurance and obligatory health insurance. Nevertheless, no satisfactory result was reached in the improvement of insurant persons (which in one way or the other include the whole population of the country). The new changes that under discussion now are of a superficial character and, if we can judge by the knowledge accumulated over the last decades, will bring at best only short-term positive effect.
According to the report commissioned by the Center for Strategic Research, the obligatory social insurance system in Russia needs radical institutional (not fiscal or parametric) changes. The changes should reimagine the role of government and private agencies in the field of insurance. It is obvious that such changes need several years of preparation and discussion, both expert and public. That is the only way to make these changes socially, economically and politically effective.
The seminar moderated by Oksana Sinyavskaya, Deputy Director of the Institute, heard the authors of Obligatory Social Insurance: Ways to Reformation report:
Еvgeny Gontmakher, Coordinating Board Member, European Dialogue Expert Group, and Professor, Higher School of Economics, with Obligatory Social Insurance System in Russia: from the Imitation to a Real Institution
Alexander Safonov, Vice Rector of Academy of Labor and Social Relations, with Reform of Social Insurance System: Main Macroeconomic and Institutional Challenges and Real Answers
Yuri Voronin, Center Director, Center for Legal Support of Social and Economic Reforms, Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation, with Concept Approaches to the Modernization of Compulsory Social Insurance in the Postindustrial Society
Andrey Kigim, Chairman, Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation, and Valentin Roik, Chief Research Fellow of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Labor of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, took an active part in the discussion.