Guo Jinhui
The 13th Five Year Plan still aims to build a more equitable and sustainable social security system in the next five years. However, compared with the decision of the Third Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee, China's social security system has made great progress in fairness in recent years, but its sustainability has not improved significantly.
As far as the top-level design of pension is concerned, fairness is to eliminate differences in identity and status, while sustainability is to ensure the balance of income and expenditure of the fund in the medium and long term.
Hu Jiye, China University of Political Science and Law, believes that measures such as the integration of urban and rural residents' pensions, and the integration of government institutions and enterprises have solved the problem of fairness by a big step, but at present, "sustainability" has become a very big problem.
Yin Weimin, the minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, also said publicly that there are hidden concerns about the sustainability of China's pension insurance system. China is a country that grows old before it gets rich, and it is also a rapidly aging country. China now has 210 million people aged over 60, accounting for 15.5% of the total population. It is predicted that by 2020, the number of people over 60 will reach 19.3%, and by 2050 it will reach 38.6%. At present, the dependency ratio of pension insurance for Chinese employees is 3.04:1, which will fall to 2.94:1 by 2020, and will fall to 1.3:1 by 1950.
The 13th Five Year Plan focuses on the sustainability of the social security fund, and achieves the balance of income and expenditure of the fund by improving the financing mechanism. Specifically, the first is to expand the coverage and absorb more people into the system. The more people join the system, the more contributors there will be and the larger the capital pool will be.
The "universal insurance plan" is a measure that reflects both fairness and sustainability. The purpose of implementing the universal insurance plan is to basically achieve full coverage of legal personnel.
Yin Weimin pointed out that from the perspective of fairness, there is still a gap between China and the goal of everyone enjoying social security. More than 100 million people are still short of full coverage of pension insurance, mainly migrant workers and flexible employees.
Like pension insurance, the medical insurance fund has begun to show signs of tightness in recent years. In particular, the medical insurance fund for urban and rural residents in some provinces and cities has been unable to cover their expenses, but the space for expansion of medical insurance has been very small. According to the survey conducted by the reporter of China Business News in Guangdong and other places, the medical insurance coverage in many regions has reached more than 97%.
In order to maintain the balance of income and expenditure of the fund, the medical insurance fund can only take the road of "saving money". The planning outline says that we should improve the mechanism of stable and sustainable financing of medical insurance and adjustment of reimbursement ratio, and study and implement the policy of medical insurance payment and insurance participation for retired employees. At the same time, we need to reform the payment method of medical insurance and give play to the role of medical insurance in controlling expenses.
Delayed retirement is also an important indicator that affects the sustainability of the fund. Its impact on the fund is two-way, which can increase the number of years of contributions and reduce the number of years of fund expenditures. Therefore, delaying retirement has become a measure taken by many countries to cope with the aging population.
The Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the 13th Five Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (hereinafter referred to as the Proposal) proposed to introduce a policy of gradually delaying the retirement age. Previously, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has determined the timetable for postponing retirement. This year, a gradual delayed retirement plan was formulated, and the 2016 annual report was released in 2017 after public consultation with the central government. Yin Weimin said that the plan will be put into place gradually, and the retirement age will only be extended for a few months every year, and the legal retirement age will be reached after a long time; It will not be implemented until at least five years after the launch.
The Proposal also proposes to reduce the social insurance rate, broaden the investment channels of social insurance funds, gradually increase the proportion of state-owned capital gains turned over to public finance, and transfer part of state-owned capital to enrich social insurance funds.
Yang Yansui, director of the Employment and Social Security Center of Tsinghua University, believes that the arrival of a deep aging society is accelerating, and coping with aging has become one of the important topics of the "13th Five Year Plan". Two generations of people in an aging society are healthy and long-lived, so people need to work longer years. They must pay equal attention to employment and welfare improvement, use money carefully, and use money where it is most needed.
