The Russian Pension Fund issued 328,300 maternity capital certificates and granted 382,000 requests for spending a total of 137.2 billion rubles in the first six months of 2018.
Key trends in the use of maternity capital, which were seen in the previous years, generally persisted in 2018. Same as before, most applicants wanted to improve their living conditions. In the first half of this year, the Pension Fund granted 322,100 requests of the kind totaling 134.3 billion rubles. A third of those families spent the money on new homes or compensated for earlier construction expenses. Two-thirds of the families spent maternity capital funds to repay their loans, including the first mortgage payment.
Although most maternity capital funds are spent on housing, an increasing number of families are showing an interest in investing maternity capital in education of their children. The number of applications for spending maternity capital on home improvement reduced 5.7% (by 19,600) over the first half of 2018, compared to the relevant period of the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of applications for paying for children’s education grew by 32.5% (12,400) to 50,600, which proved that it was the most dynamic area of the maternity capital program.
Another reason why the number of applications for funding education has increased is the program amendments, which took effect in the beginning of this year. The amendments lifted the three-year restriction on spending the funds on pre-school education, and allowed families to spend the money as soon as they were issued the certificate. As a result, 7,600 families used the new opportunity and paid for their child’s attendance of a kindergarten or a nursery school with maternity capital money. The share of such families in the overall number of requests for spending the funds on education amounted to 15% in the first six months of the year.
Monthly payments to families with low incomes became another new area of the maternity capital program in 2018. The right was given to families, to which the second child was born since the beginning of this year, in case their income per family member does not exceed 1.5 of the able-bodied population’s subsistence minimum. The Pension Fund received 13,100 requests for monthly payments from such families, and paid a total of 453 million rubles.
A total of 297 families assigned their maternity capital for mother’s funded pension, which was twice as many as in the first half of 2017, and 35 families spent maternity capital on specialized goods and services for children with disabilities.
A total of 8.7 million maternity capital certificates have been issued in Russia since the day the program took effect. The overall program funds exceeded 2.17 trillion rubles.