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.
“Gross”60+ pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Consumption Trends and Patterns Trends in Per Capita Consumption The level of living of the Soviet people has improved rapidly during the past 30 years. During 1950-80, real consumption per capita nearly tripled, rising at an average annual rate of 3.5 percent (Table 1). Gains were much smaller in the 1970s than in the l960s and l950s, reflecting a slowdown in overall economic growth. While substantial, the growth rates for per capita consumption are well within the bounds of those found in Western countries in the postwar period, and Soviet living standards remain well below those in the United States, Japan, and most of Europe, both East and West.° Over the pefiiod as a whole, per capita consumption of goods has risen faster than consumption of services, although this relationship was reversed in the l970s. Among the three major goods categories, by far the fastest growth took place in consumption of durables, as the Soviet government sought to develop productive capabilities for consumer durables from very low levels. Soft goods, too, have been made available in rapidly growing quantities and improved quality and variety. Although quantitative gains in food supplies have been the slowest of the three goods categories, the quality of the diet has nonetheless improved greatly, shifting toward a pattern of less reliance on bread and potatoes and more reliance on meat and dairy products—a shift typical of other countries as per capita income levels rise. This shift toward a more modern dietary pattern slowed in the 1970s as a result of faltering agricultural progress. Among the services, household services as a group g grew considerably faster than communal services. Particularly rapid expansion occurred in the provision of transportation, communications, and utilities. ln contrast, per capita availability of housing increased very slowly, with per capita living space in urban areas in l98O still remaining below the minimum norm for health and decency set by the government in 1928. Repair and personal care services increased even more slowly than did housing until the latter half of the 1960s, when the government began a belated push to expand facilities for providing such services. Recreation services, measured mainly by movie and " For a detailed international comparison of relative levels and rates of growth of consumption see Gertrude E. Schroeder and Imogene Edwards, op. pit. 325 93-89? O - 82 — 22 theater attendance, expanded rapidly during the 1950s but slowed sharply thereafter, reflecting the rapiclly growing use of television and less organized forms of recreation. ln contrast to the pre-war period, provision of commu- nal services per capita has increased much less rapidly than provision of goods and personal services. Health services have grown somewhat faster than education services over the period as a whole. Growth rates for both services have been quite uneven among 5-year periods, and there has been a pronounced slowdown in the expansion of both in the l970s. Nonetheless. educational attainment of the population has risen substantially—from almost 5 years in I950 to a little over ‘9 years in l980.“‘ Health services measured by the number of doctors and hospital beds per l0,000 population have more than doubled, although the quality of public health services may be seriously flawed, if one may judge from the significant in- creases in infant mortality rates in the past l0-I5 years." The discussion thus far has referred to growth rates given by indexes aggregated with weights in estab- lishecl prices. As noted below, appreciably lower rates result, when component indexes are aggregated with factor cost weights. Differences occur in the growth rates for total consumption, goods, food, household services, and for services as a whole. When the concern is to indicate the expansion of real resources allocated to consumption, the indexes of consumption at factor cost are preferable. A summary comparison of growth rates for consumption and major categories measured in both sets of prices is given in Table 5 below. Changes in the Structure of Consumption The structure of consumption in the Soviet Union has been remarkably stable since 1950 (Table 2). Whether measured in established prices or at factor cost, the respective shares of goods and of services were about '° CIA, USSR: Trends and Prospects in Educational .4!taintm'nt. ER 79-10344, June 1979, pp l, 23. “ Christopher Davis and Murray Feshbaeh. Rising In/km! Mortal- ity in the USSR in the 1970s, US Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, International Population Reports, Series P- 95, No. 74, June 1980. 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.