High death rate will increase pensions for this year

The massive increase in mortality in the past two years has made ZUS calculate higher benefits for all those who decide to retire this year. We also dealt with a similar phenomenon a year ago.

In 2021, more than 519,000 people died in Poland. For the first time since the end of World War II, the death toll has exceeded half a million It was about 42 thousand. Higher than the already disastrous result from 2020. As was the result of nearly 110 thousand. higher than in 2019 – another full year as much The normal functioning of the government medical sector.

High mortality rates lead not only to demographic changes, but also to the statistics that are taken into account when calculating ZUS pensions. Traditionally, at the end of March, the Central Bureau of Statistics publishes life expectancy tables. Prepared by the Central Bureau of Statistics “Communication on life expectancy schedule for women and men” It is one of the main publications of the hundreds of thousands of Army’s retired conscripts this year.

Life expectancy tables are compiled on the basis of data on mortality in certain age groups (so-called cohorts). On this basis, the average remaining amount of life for a person of a certain age is estimated. The table reads as follows: on the vertical axis you find your age (in years), and in the horizontal axis you indicate the number of months since your last birthday. At the intersection of the row and column, you get the average number of months, which on average separates people born in that month from dying.

retirement math

A person who celebrates his sixtieth birthday today is in front of him in the middle
238.9 months of age, so he should live on average to 79.9 years. For people over 65 years old, provided by the Central Bureau of Statistics in the middle 196.2 months with more life – 16.35 years after retirement. Remember that this is just an average based on a large statistical sample. In no case should these numbers be taken as an individual prediction.

Compared to similar tables before In the year, life expectancy decreased again. In the case of the 60-year-old, it is in this year’s tables of 238.9 months, which is 8.8 months less than the previous year and 22.6 months less than the previous two years. For a 65-year-old person, this parameter decreased by 8.1 months to 196.2 months over the past year. Life expectancy has decreased by 21.4 months over the past two years. These are the repercussions of the record death toll from the administrative closure of state-owned hospitals and in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These figures are of great importance for the amount of old-age pensions for those who receive old-age pension rights in a given year. When you apply for an old-age pension, ZUS divides the sum of “contributions” reserved to the IT system by the number of additional months of life you have, according to the GUS tables. So The lower this figure, the higher the pension granted by ZUS.

For example, if you are 65 years old and your ZUS account shows an amount of 400,000 PLN. PLN, your pension will be PLN 2038.74 per month. ZUS assumes that people of your year (and month) will live an average of 196.2 months. You will, of course, receive your old-age pension for the rest of your life (yours or the Social Insurance Institution). The system is calculated to balance itself on a large scale. This means that, in theory, interest payments for long-lived people are financed from the “capital” of those who have lived below the assumed average. Of course, this is just a theory, because in practice, the money for the payment of benefits from ZUS comes from the “contributions” that are currently paid by employees and entrepreneurs.

retirement controversy

It is worth realizing that this entire system is based on two very unfair solutions. first, There is no money to “allocate” from your side in the Social Security Fund. Everything you give to ZUS is paid out instantly to existing retirees. ZUS saves only Information About how much I paid and how much I promised to pay you in the future. Whether and how much he will pay remains to be seen in a dozen or so years or several tens of years.

In the long run, the solvency of the ZUS pension system depends on the number of subscribers who pay monthly “contributions” to it. However, we have been dealing with the situation for several years When more Poles retire from the labor market. The position of the ZUS was saved by the good situation in the labor market (increased nominal wages and higher rates of professional activity) and mass emigration of workers from outside the eastern borders. However, in the long run, the Polish pension system will increasingly depend on the influx of workers from outside Poland, because In 2021, the number of births fell to its lowest level after 1945.

Second, ZUS uses ZUS to determine the amount of pension Life expectancy chart for men and women. Article 26, point 3 Disability Pensions and Pensions Act from the Social Insurance Fund It clearly states that Life expectancy is jointly determined by men and women and expressed in months.

Meanwhile, it is known – Because this data is published by the same GUS – that men, on average, live shorter lives than women. So they are further deprived by the state. Because not only can they apply for benefits from ZUS after 5 years of women, but they are also cheated on the base rate, which is their life expectancy.

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