Wages and social insurance

The article deals with the theoretical and practical issues of the concepts of wages and payment for work. Their substantive characteristics and legal framework are instruments of legal, agreement-based regulation of population income and social protection in almost any country. In Russia wage rates are determined only from the point of employment period. Neither dependency ratio nor insurance savings on pension benefits are taken into account. In result, the wages and social insurance costs are twice lower than in economically developed countries. Solving the problem of formation of an effective system of wages and payment for work is only possible when considering their purpose — satisfaction of both the current needs of workers and their families, and replacement of the loss by insurance benefits in the amount comparable to wages, when social risks occur. A special place is given to showing the impact of wages on organization of social insurance, and substantiation of wages size with the account of such social risks as illness, unemployment, old age, disability, that are characteristic of people’s life at different stages of labor and post-labor periods. The article presents experience of the regulation of wages and payment for work in Russia and foreign countries. There are highlighted new challenges in this sphere and proposed the ways to formation of institutes of the population labor income on a unified conceptual basis.