Since the basic old-age insurance system began to try to introduce personal accounts 28 years ago, the controversy about personal accounts has never stopped.

Over the years, the disputes over the deposit and abolition of personal accounts, big and small, real and short have not been eliminated because of the repeated finalization of the central document. On the contrary, various differences between theory and practice, whether explicit or implicit, still exist.

1After the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in October, 20 1 165438 changed "implementing personal accounts as a pilot project" to "improving personal accounts", and there were great differences in the industry on the path of improving personal accounts. The core of the dispute is whether personal accounts should be converted into nominal accounts and whether it is necessary to expand personal accounts.

The First Financial Reporter learned from many insiders that after more than two years of fierce debate, the path of personal account reform has gradually become clear: personal accounts are no longer true, and the direction of taking 8% personal accounts as personal rights records is gaining more understanding. However, industry insiders expect that the plan to improve personal accounts will not be determined until after the 19 th National Congress.

Experts believe that, unlike social pooling, the liabilities in personal accounts are hard-bound, and it is impossible to reduce pension expenditure by adjusting the calculation formula in the future, which means that the burden of the working generation will be heavier then.

Personal accounts are doomed.

Song Xiaowu, chairman of China Economic Reform Research Foundation, has been directly involved in the design and reform of social security system in China for a long time since 1980s. He said at a recent symposium on personal accounts for old-age insurance that since 1989 introduced personal accounts for basic old-age insurance in Shenzhen and Hainan provinces, there have been four rounds of disputes about personal accounts.

1993 The core of the first round of disputes before the Third Plenary Session of the 14th CPC Central Committee was whether to introduce personal accounts. The climax of the second round of disputes occurred in 1996 ~ 1997, and the core was the dispute over the scale of personal accounts. Although the State Council decided to implement the system of unified accounting, he also recommended two schemes, one is the big account and the other is the small account of the Ministry of Labor.

The combination of unified accounts is diversified in implementation, and the scale of individual accounts is not uniform, from the lowest 4% to the highest 17%, which brings many contradictions to the reform of pension system. Song Xiaowu said that at that time, the employees in Hubei Province reported that they were all in Wuhan, but there was no way to transfer from provincial enterprises to enterprises affiliated to Wuhan because the scale of personal accounts was different.

The year 2000 is the third climax of personal account disputes. Judging from the situation of the seminar that year, the view against personal accounts is obviously not dominant, and most institutions and scholars are in favor of continuing to adhere to the institutional model of "combining unified accounts".

The State Council finally decided to maintain the unified account system, but the personal account should be small and solid. Since 200 1, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang have successively started to implement pilot projects, but they have encountered unprecedented difficulties in the process of implementing personal accounts. By 2008, the pilot program of individual accounts had been expanded to 13 provinces, and some of them had also signed entrusted operation agreements with the National Social Security Fund Council, but since then, no provinces have been willing to join.

It is understood that by 20 10, the central government temporarily stopped the pilot subsidy for Liaoning Province, which took the lead in making real accounts, and Liaoning Province was specially approved to borrow from the personal account fund that has been made real, which means that the pilot of Liaoning personal accounts almost failed.

Li Zhen, a professor at the School of Public Administration of China Renmin University, said that the Social Insurance Law promulgated on 20 10 only clarified the system mode of combining unified accounts, but avoided the implementation of individual accounts. At this point, the personal account implementation policy began to waver.

Personal accounts are not expanded.

In reality, the dilemma encountered in the pilot project of "realizing personal account" is that it is difficult for underdeveloped areas to realize personal account because of the serious imbalance of regional development, and because of the low investment efficiency, developed coastal areas are unwilling to do it although they can.

It is difficult to pilot the personal account, which once again pushes the personal account reform to a crossroads. In the communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, perfecting personal account replaced the previous personal account practice. The dispute over personal accounts has also reached its fourth climax. The focus of this dispute is whether to implement nominal accounts and whether to expand the proportion of personal accounts.

This debate began at the end of 20 14. Lou Jiwei, then Minister of Finance, believed that it was no longer sustainable to implement personal accounts, and the Nominal Personal Account (NDC) was an optional model to improve the personal accounts of endowment insurance in the next step. He supports the reform plan to expand personal accounts.

According to informed sources, the Ministry of Finance has calculated 28%, 16% and 8% of nominal personal accounts. The purpose of expanding personal accounts is to improve the incentive mechanism of the old-age insurance system and increase the sustainability of the system.

A group of social security scholars and officials, including Song Xiaowu, oppose the expansion of individual accounts, especially the "full account" with zero overall planning without any social benefits.

Song Xiaowu believes that in the case that the initial distribution gap in China is already too large, we should improve the basic old-age insurance system for employees, adhere to the principles of fairness and economy, and persist in narrowing rather than expanding the initial distribution gap.

Zheng Gongcheng, president of China Social Security Society, said at the above-mentioned seminar that in the multi-level system, the government should not only participate in public pension, but also play the role of credit guarantor, so as to effectively provide stable safety expectations and let the people always trust it; The so-called incentive mechanism of overpaying should be diluted, because it conflicts with the social equity pursued by the public pension system.

Zhu Qing, a professor at the School of Finance and Finance of Renmin University of China, believes that there are two original intentions to establish a personal account system. One is to introduce individual contributions, and the other is to accumulate endowment insurance funds to increase the savings rate and promote economic growth.

He said that it is inappropriate for people who advocate expanding personal accounts to mention housing provident fund, because housing provident fund is a short-term institutional project and can benefit, while the basic old-age insurance system is a long-term system, and the insured can not enjoy treatment until at least 35 years later. Housing provident fund and basic old-age insurance have different properties, so we can't simply learn from them. It is not recommended to expand the payment scale of personal accounts.

According to people familiar with the matter, the central high-level officials have adopted the proposal of adhering to the fairness and economy of endowment insurance, and "pay more, get more" has also faded out of the central document in the last two years.

Although expanding personal accounts is not the future direction of reform, nominal accounts have become a good medicine to solve the current empty accounts of personal accounts.

The scientific name of the nominal account system is "nominal payment certainty type", and its essence has two points: the financing mode adopts pay-as-you-go system and the payment mode adopts payment certainty type. In short, there is no real money in the personal account in the future, but the personal payment is recorded, and the payment and income are included in the account as the basis for future payment.

Song Xiaowu said that the current first choice is to keep the existing unified account system unchanged, but based on the practical difficulties in making personal accounts, changing the 8% personal accounts paid by employees into nominal accounts can not only achieve a smooth transition effect, but also ensure the social economy of the system.

Nominal account means that in the future, the personal account of endowment insurance will no longer be true, but only be used as the record of the rights and interests of individual insurance contributions, and the endowment insurance fund will truly return to the pay-as-you-go system.

Personal account is the result of compromise with reality. Although nominal accounts can legalize empty accounts and reduce the financial burden to a certain extent, they cannot fundamentally solve the contradiction between the private nature of individual accounts and the economy of social overall planning.

Song Xiaowu said that he has always opposed the introduction of personal accounts in the basic old-age insurance system and adhered to the principle of practical small amounts in the practice of personal account reform for many years. This time, it is proposed to implement the nominal account system for 8% personal accounts, which is based on the compromise of maintaining the stability and continuity of the system. He said that if the personal account can be reduced to 5%, the basic old-age insurance system will be more economical.

Pension insurance returns to pay-as-you-go system?

1966 Henry Allen, a famous American scholar, put forward the famous "Allen condition" in the article "Social Insurance Paradox". He said that if the sum of the per capita wage growth rate and the population growth rate exceeds the interest rate, the introduction of the pay-as-you-go social pension insurance fund can improve everyone's welfare.

Zhu Qing believes that the actual national conditions in China are in line with the Allen conditions, that is, the sum of the real wage growth rate and the population growth rate in China is much higher than the real rate of return, so it is more efficient to establish a pay-as-you-go system in China, and there is no need to establish a fund system.

Wang Xinmei, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Population and Labor Economics of China Academy of Social Sciences, has long been concerned about the personal account of endowment insurance. After studying the development of accumulated pensions in Chile, Singapore and many developed countries, she pointed out that the privatization reform of public pensions promoted by the World Bank is based on wrong assumptions.

Wang Xinmei said that in the global pension reform in the past 20 years, the view that the accumulation system proposed by international financial institutions such as the World Bank can cope with the aging population structure has been completely rejected by all developed countries both in theory and in practice.

Yang Jun, an associate professor at the China Social Security Research Center of Renmin University of China, believes that the personal account reform initiated by Chile 198 1 has caused strong opposition from the insured. The incentive function of personal account system is actually very limited. Many people only maintain the minimum payment period, and many people escape from this system.

Isabella Chow, an academician of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that some discussions about personal accounts confuse the state and the market. Generally speaking, public pension is divided into two layers, one is the basic pension that reflects fairness, and the other is the supplementary pension that reflects income difference, which is a bit like the personal account in China. Both of them are pay-as-you-go, with little investment. The real personal account is market behavior.

From unified account combination to unified account separation

Zheng Gongcheng said that more than 20 years' practice has proved that one of the major mistakes in the reform of the old-age insurance system in China is simply introducing completely privatized personal accounts into the basic old-age insurance system without rational argumentation, which not only damages the fairness and stability of the old-age insurance system, but also causes a series of bad sequelae.

Li Zhen opposed the introduction of personal accounts in the basic old-age insurance from the beginning of the system establishment. In her view, the theoretical dilemma of mixing the basic old-age insurance for urban workers with social insurance lies in the fact that personal accounts are private property and have no insurance nature, so it is theoretically unreasonable to embed them into social insurance.

Li Zhen told the first financial reporter that it is precisely because of the combination of unified accounts and the existence of private property rights that no one wants to work hard, actively participate in insurance and pay more fees because of the design of personal account system, and the hypothetical theory of personal account incentive has not been realized.

"At that time, the basic old-age insurance system was difficult to achieve through the combination of unified accounts and incentive mechanisms. In fact, the final result is that the combination of unified accounts has become a' mixed account'. " Song Xiaotong said.

Zheng Gongcheng believes that simply introducing completely privatized personal accounts into the basic old-age insurance system not only weakens the mutual aid function of public pensions, but also directly damages the reliability and sustainability of this system, and also leads to the regional division of the basic old-age insurance system, which makes the enterprise annuity and commercial old-age insurance with completely privatized personal accounts unable to develop healthily.

Li Zhen believes that the implementation of nominal accounts means "shorting" personal accounts, and one hurdle for empty accounts is how to calculate interest.

The fundamental difference between a nominal account and a bank account is that the depositor gives the real money to the bank, and the bank pays interest to the savings after realizing the investment income, but there is no money in the nominal account, and the money paid by the individual has been taken out to give pensions to retirees.

"The interest rate is low, the account holder suffers, the interest rate is high, and the next generation suffers." Li Zhen said that after the reform, if the interest is calculated according to the one-year bank interest rate as before, the insured person will be damaged and the personal account pension level will be low; If you add higher interest, you will soon accumulate a lot of debts.

Li Zhen believes that, unlike social pooling, the liabilities in personal accounts are hard-bound, and it is impossible to reduce the pension expenditure by adjusting the calculation formula in the future, which means that the burden of the working generation will be heavier at that time, thus dragging down the economic development of China.

Therefore, Li Zhen suggested that the personal account of employee pension insurance should be separated from social pension insurance, so that the insured can establish a voluntary savings pension system, which will reduce the distortion caused by government intervention. At the same time, the separation of personal accounts needs other parameter reforms, otherwise there will be problems in the balance of payments of the system.

"If at the beginning of the reform, we just change the endowment insurance arranged by the state and enterprises into a social endowment insurance system that does not introduce personal accounts, and then promote the development of enterprise annuity and commercial endowment insurance on the basis of this system, then the reform of the endowment insurance system in China will be much smoother." Zheng Gongcheng said.

Since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed to improve personal accounts, academic circles have put forward a variety of schemes to improve personal accounts. In many schemes, the combination of unified accounts and the separation of unified accounts are considered as the fundamental solution, that is, the personal accounts in the first pillar are separated from social overall planning and turned to the second or third pillar, so that the government can be owned by the government and the market can be owned by the market.

However, the separation of unified accounts requires "major surgery" on the current system, and improving personal accounts is still difficult to become a realistic option. The reform of endowment insurance still has a long way to go.