USSR: Measures of Economic Growth and Development, 1950-80

Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
Weights. The weights for the four sub-indexes and for
the components of the telephone indexes are the
revenues for the various kinds of services provided by
the Ministry of Communications (Transport i svyaz’,
I972, p. 302). There are no data with which to obtain
separate value weights for the individual components
of the postal and radio-TV broadcasting sub-indexes.
Index. The nature and sources of data for the four sub-
indexes are shown below:
Sector Nature of Series Sources
Postal Sum of the number
of letters, newspapers
and magazines, par-
cels, and money or-
ders and pension pay-
ments
Transport 1'
svyaz', I972, p.
274 and similar
tables in Nark-
hozy for subse-
quent years
Telegraph Number of telegrams lbid.
Telephone Weighted sum of
number of inter-ur-
ban calls, urban sets,
and rural sets
Transport i
svyaz ', I972, pp.
274, 283, 285 and
similar tables in
Narkhozy for
subsequent years.
Radio-TV broadcast-
ing
Sum of the number
of radios, TV sets,
and wired loudspeak-
ers
Transport i
svyaz’, 1972, p.
292 and similar
tables in Nark-
hazy for subse-
quent years.
Repair and Personal Care. Scope and Coverage. As
defined here, the sector encompasses a wide variety of
personal services, the most important of which are:
repair and tailoring of clothing, repair.of household
appliances and automobiles; shoe repair; barbershops
and beauty parlors; public baths; and photographic
services. The coverage is nearly identical to that of the
Soviet statistical category Bytovoye obsluzhivaniye
naseleniya (“everyday servicing of the population”),
except that the latter includes housing construction
and repair, which is included in “housing” in the GNP
accounts. In Soviet practice, these services are classi-
fied partly as “productive” and partly as “non-
productive,” but statistics for both groups combined
are now reported regularly in the annual handbooks.
The coverage of the sector is described in Met0diches-
kiye ukazaniya, 1974, pp. 774-776.
In US national accounts these services are classified
mainly in “personal services” and “miscellaneous
repair services and hand trades.” For the most part, the
indexes used to measure expenditures in real terms are
calculated as the deflated values of outlays in current
prices.
The index for “repair and personal care" is a weighted
composite of separate indexes for state-supplied ser-
vices and for privately supplied services. Both purport
to represent the value of such services in constant I970
prices. Although the coverage of the combined index is
virtually complete, the underlying data leave much to
be desired. The index for state services is based on
published values reported for some years in current
prices and for other years in various kinds ofconstant
prices. To complete the time series, use was made of
growth rates for the RSFSR and various assumptions
for years for which no data could be found. The series
for private services relies on survey data relative to the
RSFSR in I960-I971 and on assumptions about their
growth in other years. The unsatisfactory state of the
data is a result of the fact that state-supplied personal
services were long neglected and that systematic data
are not compiled on privately supplied services. Evalu-
ation ofthe quality ofthe resulting index is difficult. It
relies _in part on official price deflators of an unknown
character. The index, as a consequence may overstate
the growth of state-supplied services. On the other
hand, the assumptions (and the data) on trends in
private services may understate their growth. Clearly,
the total supply of services has been increasing rapidly
as incomes have risen. The index reflects this expected
result; the degree of accuracy is hard to assess.
Weights. Separate values for state and privately sup-
plied services were derived for the I970 GNP weights.
The value for state-supplied services was obtained as
shown below: The value of private services is estimat-
ed in CIA, GNP I970, p. 42, except that housing
repair services are now estimated at l.07I billion
rubles. (See tabulation on next page.)
Indexes. State-supplied services. The construction of
this sub-index entailed a series of linkages based on
diverse data.
l. The procedure described on the following page to
obtain the value for I970 was used to obtain similar
values in current prices for 1960 and 1965- I 972 and in
comparable prices for I965 and I970-76. The values of
sales to enterprises were estimated from the shares
given in Dmitriev, op. cit., p. 98 for 1965, I970, and
I972. Their share in 1965 was used for all preceding
years. Extrapolation for I973-76 was made on the
basis of the average annual rates of growth of their
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Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421