Documents / FOIA release
This Joint Committee Print, dated December 8, 1982, gathers studies that the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. It gives estimates of Soviet gross national product for 1950 to 1980, with indexes of industrial production, agricultural production and consumption, and explains the methods and data behind them. The foreword says official Soviet statistics inflate growth and that the CIA measures offer a more accurate picture. The document contains no UFO material.
“V.M.”23 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 increased slightly since 1965. Total defense expendi- tures are not presented as a separate end-use category because we believe that some defense expenditures are contained in several other components of GNP. In- vestment probably includes the procurement of com- mon use durables, such as trucks and transport air- craft, and the construction of military facilities. Science probably is very heavily weighted toward defense expenditures. Other defense expenditures could well be contained in administration, education, and health expenditures. Because of many uncertain- ties, no estimate is made here of the values of defense expenditures included in the other end-use categories. Estimates of total defense expenditures have been made by the CIA independent of the GNP accounts. These data are presented for reference in appendix C. Consumption has declined as a share of GNP from 60 percent in 1950 to 54 percent in 1980. Consumption consists of two principal components, goods and serv- ices, which have shown similar growth rates. The consumption of goods has grown at an annual rate of 4.3 percent per year since 1950, and services at 4.2 percent compared with 4.7 percent for GNP. As a result, the consumer goods share of GNP has declined from 38 percent in 1950 to 34 percent in 1980, while the consumer services share has declined from 22 to 20 percent. Within consumption, there have been sizable structural changes. The consumption of food has declined sharply as a share of GNP, from 32 percent in 1950 to 23 percent in 1980, while the consumption of soft goods and durables has risen as a share of GNP from 6 percent in 1950 to 11 percent in 1980. Trends in per capita consumption are more useful indicators of the impact on living standards of re- sources allocated to consumption than are trends in total consumption. Measured at factor cost, Soviet per capita consumption has grown at an average annual rate of 2.9 percent since 1950, but only 2.2 percent since 1970——reflecting both the overall slowdown in GNP growth and the falling share of consumption in GNP. Soviet Growth in International Perspective Without doubt the Soviet economy has achieved rapid growth since 1950. This performance, however, can best be interpreted and understood when compared 19 with growth trends in other countries during the same period. These trends can be measured in terms of GNP growth, priorities in output use, and growth in per capita consumption. Comparisons of GNP Growth. Table 1 compares the average annual rates of growth of GNP for the Soviet Union and of gross domestic product (GDP) for selected OECD countries.” For the entire 1951-79 period, the figure for the Soviet Union is roughly in the middle of the OECD range. Japan, West Germa- ny, Spain, and Turkey clearly achieved faster growth than the Soviet Union, and several other nations achieved rates close to the Soviet figure. In compari- son with the United States, the Soviet Union consis- tently enjoyed a higher growth rate until the late 1970s. The average annual growth rate of Soviet GNP is a full percentage point higher than that of the United States for the entire 1951-79 period. Since 1970, however, the growth rate of Soviet GNP has declined steadily, while the US growth rate has continued at roughly an unchanged tempo. As a result, the US and Soviet economies grew by almost the same average rates in the 1970s. Priorities in Output Use. Another way of comparing the performance of the Soviet and OECD economies is to examine the patterns of output use. Table 2 shows the percentage distribution of the GDP of several OECD countries and of the GNP of the Soviet Union among consumption, investment, and all other expenditures. The data for the Soviet Union are not strictly comparable with those for the OECD coun- tries because Soviet Government expenditures for health, education, and physical culture are included in consumption. These expenditures were equal to 5.5 percent of Soviet GNP in 1970 and serve to inflate Soviet consumption data relative to the OECD data.“ The share of Soviet GNP allocated to investment, measured in 1970 prices, has steadily increased— from 14 percent in 1950 to 32 percent in l979—while ” The difference between GNP and GDP for the Soviet Union is negligible and can be ignored for these comparisons. 1‘ JEC, Consumption Comparison, makes careful adjustments for these definitional differences and obtains similar changes in the consumption shares to those shown in table 2. The absolute levels of the adjusted consumption shares, as expected, are higher. Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.