The average pension in Romania

The average monthly pension is computed by dividing the amounts due to the pensioners on the payroll by their average monthly number multiplied by twelve. It is not the pension any particular pensioner receives, nor the “typical” pension: it is an arithmetic mean, which the large pensions pull upwards.

The headline figure is the state social insurance pension, the scheme the great majority of pensioners are in. The average of all pensioners additionally covers other schemes and categories — military pensions among them — as well as the recipients of pension-type social aid and those in the I.O.V.R. category.

The two figures cross over time, and that shows how much it matters which of them is read. In the first quarter of 2005 the average of all pensioners was below the state one, because there were still some 1.5 million farmer pensioners on small pensions. Today it is above it. This is not merely a difference of level, but a difference in the shape of the history.

The amounts due have changed their content several times by law: from January 1999 they include the supplementary pension and the health insurance contribution, from July 2000 also the tax on the amounts above the ceiling, and from January 2003 they no longer include the health contribution. Comparisons over long spans cross these changes.