To summarize: in Soviet Russia you got early retirement if you worked in mining, or moved to certain smaller towns. A lot of people in Russia maximized their early retirement by doing this. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia went through Hard Times. Their fertility rate fell off a cliff and never recovered. While other countries also had falling fertility rates, they also have lots of immigration to offset that, but nobody wants to move to Russia. So imagine America, but with no millenials, no immigrants, twice as many boomers, and they all only care about keeping Medicare functional for exclusively themselves.
One of Putin's first acts was to attempt pension reform, because it's the $3600 spent on candles[0] in the Russian budget. This led to massive protests, so he backed down. He tried again around the time COVID started, and again, massive protests. It's the one thing that reliably causes Putin's popularity numbers to fall. Not even an unpopular invasion will do that. Because, for a large proportion of older Russians, the government exists solely as the medium by which treasure is pilfered from the rest of the world and into their pocket.
I don't remember the exact proportion of Russian pensioners to the rest of the population, I just remember that it's unusually dire.
This video has it's own sources list linked in the description: https://pastebin.com/AbaJ8EW1
To summarize: in Soviet Russia you got early retirement if you worked in mining, or moved to certain smaller towns. A lot of people in Russia maximized their early retirement by doing this. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia went through Hard Times. Their fertility rate fell off a cliff and never recovered. While other countries also had falling fertility rates, they also have lots of immigration to offset that, but nobody wants to move to Russia. So imagine America, but with no millenials, no immigrants, twice as many boomers, and they all only care about keeping Medicare functional for exclusively themselves.
One of Putin's first acts was to attempt pension reform, because it's the $3600 spent on candles[0] in the Russian budget. This led to massive protests, so he backed down. He tried again around the time COVID started, and again, massive protests. It's the one thing that reliably causes Putin's popularity numbers to fall. Not even an unpopular invasion will do that. Because, for a large proportion of older Russians, the government exists solely as the medium by which treasure is pilfered from the rest of the world and into their pocket.
I don't remember the exact proportion of Russian pensioners to the rest of the population, I just remember that it's unusually dire.
[0] https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472