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

Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
Indexes. Personnel services. The index for personnel
services is based on total manhours worked in “health
and physical culture.” The manhour series for 1950-
1976 is presented and described in Stephen Rapawy,
Foreign Economic Report No. 10, 10c. cit., p. 6'0, and
extended to 1980 by him. It was not possible to
remove manhours worked in sports organizations and
vacation resorts from the series. There are no data
with which to adjust the series either for changes in
the educational quality of the labor force or for
changes in the skill mix. However, the number of
“middle medical personnel”—nurses, feldshers, medi-
cal technicians and the like-—has increased faster
since 1950 then has the number of doctors. Average
life expectancy at birth in the USSR did not change
between 1960-61 and 1971-72, when the publication
of such data was halted. Life expectancy probably has
declined since then, because infant mortality rates
and death rates for adult males have been rising since
1969.”
Other current purchases. The index of other current
purchases is obtained by a procedure similar to that
used for education. The derivation is as follows:
(0) Other current purchases in current prices
(1) Data on total non-investment outlays for health
financed from union republic budgets are available
for 1950-57 and 1960-75, with a distribution by type
of expenditure. To obtain “other current purchases”
in each year, the sum of outlays on wages and social
insurance, equipment, and capital repair was deduct-
ed from total non-investment outlays, and fees paid by
parents were added. The values for “other current
purchases" so obtained are then expressed as percent-
ages of total non-investment outlays.
(2) Almost four-fifths of total expenditures on health
is financed from republic budgets. To obtain values
for “other current purchases” for the USSR as a
whole the percentages derived in step (1) were multi-
plied by the values for total non-investment outlays
financed from the state budget (union and republic
budgets). This step assumes that the distribution of
expenditures by object is the same in both types of
budgets. The distributions were quite similar in 1950-
57, the only years when such data for both budgets
are available.
" Christopher Davis and Murray Feshbach, op. cit., pp. 1-8.
(3) The data for steps (1) and (2) are found in the
following sources for 1950-75: Raskhody, pp. 71-72,
76. Gosbyudzhet I966, pp. 57, 90, 94. Gosbyudzhet
I972, pp. 62, 95, 99. Gosbyudzhet 1976, pp. 60, 92,
96.
For years after 1975, data on total non-investment
outlays for health financed from the state budget are
given in the annual statistical handbooks, e.g., Nark-
hoz 1978, p. 536. The percentage share of “other
current purchases” in the total was assumed to remain
at the 1975 level: the share changed little in 1966-75.
A small amount of current expenditures for health
care is known to be financed from sources other than
the state budget (funds of enterprises and trade
unions, mainly). There are no data with which to take
such expenditures into account in constructing the
indexes.
(b) Price index
“Other current purchases” by institutions classified in
the health sector encompass a wide variety of items.
The most important one is food, which in the expendi-
tures in republic budgets made up an estimated 32
percent of the total in 1970; the remainder consisted
of medicines (26 percent), bedding and uniforms (8
percent), services and miscellaneous outlays (22 per-
cent), and a variety of items related to office and
housekeeping expenses (12 percent). The price index
used to deflate this mix of expenditures is the same as
that used to deflate a similar group of outlays of
educational institutions. The considerations leading to
this choice are similar to those set forth above in the
discussion of the price deflator for other current
outlays in education. Like schools and kindergartens,
hospitals, rest homes, and children’s nurseries pur-
chase a substantial part of their supplies at retail
outlets, particularly food. According to data in Vest
stat, No. 5, 1971, pp. 34, 36, compared with data in
Gosbyudzhet 1972, pp. 95, 99, these organizations
purchased nearly all of their food from retail outlets
and a significant share of other purchases.~
The description and sources for the price deflator are
given above in the discussion of the index for
education.
352
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421