Pensioners Reach 30% Mark in 2012
At the start of 2012, the share of pensioners in Estonia reached 30 percent of the population.
The count was 404,525 - up by 9,000 from the year before. Retirement pensioners account for 74 percent and worker incapacity for 22 percent - the share of the latter has nearly doubled since 2002.
In 1970, pensioners made up just 19 percent of the population. In the agency's blog, Statistics Estonia's senior analyst Marve Randlepp said the large influx of pensioners can be explained by four factors: demographic changes; the restructuring of the pension system in 2000; the decision in 2010 to incrementally increase the retirement age to 65; and the last economic recession. The latter two seem to have a direct correlation with the fast growth in worker incapacity pensioner numbers: on the average, the number of retirement pensioners has grown by 2,000 while the ranks of worker incapacity pensioners have swollen by 7,000 each year for the last three years.
Currently, the number of pensioners is increasing by 0.8 percent per year on average, compared to 0.2 percent in the 1970s and 1980s.
In some regions of Estonia, the share of pensioners reached 30 percent a long time ago. For instance, that mark was passed in 1994 for Võru County.
Ott Tammik