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 an index of official retail prices (including CFM prices) grows much more rapidly than the CIA index of real per capita consumption. Soviet Measures CIA Index Current Constant Constant Prices Prices Prices 1960 100.0 100.0 100.0 1975 211.1 209.6 166.8 Average annual 5.1 5.1 3.5 growth The Soviet government also gauges progress in raising 1iv_ing standards by a regularly published statistical series labeled “real incomes of the population,” ex- pressed per capita. Although the exact nature of this published statistic is something of a puzzle “ it apparently measures real per capita consumption of goods and material services.“ As described in an official source, the calculation for each year: (1) begins with money incomes from all sources (2) deducts taxes, savings, change in bank loans and cash balances, and payments for services to arrive at money expenditures for the purchase of goods (3) adds incomes in kind, material expenditures (including depreciation) of insti- tutions serving the population—transportation, health, education and others—payments for utilities, the value of cooperative housing constructed, and depreciation on state housing, and (4) deflates current values with an index of the prices of goods. In coverage, it differs from the CIA index of consumption, mainly by inclusion of cooperative housing, depreciation on housing and on the capital stock in services and by exclusion of labor services. As Table 6 shows, the official index grows much more rapidly than the CIA index——almost half again as fast for the period as a whole. The difference is greater in the 1970s than in earlier periods. The reasons for the faster growth of the official index of real incomes are obscure. Neither the structure of that index in current values nor the deflator has been published. Why the official index increases more rapidly compared with the CIA index in somelperiods than in others also is not evident. Differences in 1’ Gertrude E. Schroeder in Treml and Hardt, pp. 304-307. “ The most complete description of how real incomes apparently are calculated is given in USSR Gosplan, Metodicheskiye ukazaniya k razrabotke gosudarstvennogo plana razviliya narodnogo kha- zyaystva SSSR, Moscow, 1969, pp. 499-505. (Hereafter referred to as Metodicheskiye ukazaniya.) coverage may be part of the explanation, for the CIA index includes personnel services in education, health and other services, which apparently grow more slow- ly than materials used in these sectors. The main reason however, seems to lie in the faulty price index used in the Soviet index to deflate current expendi- tures and imputed depreciation. The CIA index, in contrast, attempts to measure real quantities of goods and services consumed. Comparison of this index with an index in current prices provides an implied mea- sure of price inflation. Other Western Measures Only two Western measures of Soviet real consump- tion are available for comparison with the CIA index- es—one calculated by Janet Chapman 2‘ for the peri- od 1950-58 and one calculated by Abraham Becker 2° for the period 1958-64. The construction of both of these series begins with estimates of consumption constructed in current prices. The sub-categories of consumption are then deflated by price indexes of one kind or another. Both measures follow concepts and methodologies developed by Abram Bergson. The Chapman index for 1955-58 and the Becker index, in effect, employ Soviet official price deflators for goods purchased at retail prices. The Chapman index for 1951-55 uses Bergson’s calculations for the period.” The implicit Bergson-Chapman deflator gives nearly the same rate of price change for the period as does a weighted index of official indexes of prices in state and cooperative stores and of prices on collective farm markets.”“The Bergson-Chapman implicit price index for 1955 (1950= I00) is 78.0,” the combined official price index is 77.6 or 76.7, with 1950 and 1955 weights, respectively. . With respect to the other components, matters are more complex. In general, the Bergson and Becker indexes (1) value consumption in kind, housing, and personal services in physical quantities in constant sets of prices (2) deflate the wage component of expenditures on health and education by an index of wages and (3) deflate nonlabor expenditures on health and education by composite deflators compiled from various sources (Bergson; Becker elected not to deflate such expenditures.) The Chapman index for 1956-58 1‘ Janet G. Chapman, Ioc. cil., in 1 above. 1° Abraham Becker, I00. cit.. in " above. 2’ Bergson, 1961, pp. 307-308. 2” Narkhoz I958. pp. 699, 771, 787. 2° Bergson, 1961, pp. 46, 85. 334 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.