fected by its coal and steel industries, showed greater relative losses than the region as a whole in all the nonfarm groups, with pronounced actual losses in operatives and laborers.

The highly industrialized East North Central region also lagged behind national growth in most of the occupational groups. Illinois and Wisconsin largely accounted for this region's lower than average growth in the nonfarm occupations. Michigan's above average increase in professional workers and its loss in operatives, largely associated with its dominant automotive industry, were a reflection of its changing economy.

The West North Central region showed aboveaverage growth in the operatives and service groups, increasing its share of these workers slightly. State rates of occupational growth show Minnesota and Kansas leading in the gradual urbanization and industrial development of this region.

The South Atlantic region, one of the three fastest growing regions, achieved above-average rates of growth in most of the major nonfarm occupation groups, thereby raising its share of workers in all nonfarm occupations except private household workers, and lowering its share of the Nation's farm workers. Florida's gains far exceeded those of any other State in the region. Its professional and clerical workers more than doubled in the rapid industrial development of the State, bolstered by increased missile and space activities. Excluding the District of Columbia (which as a central city in a metropolitan area is not comparable to a State), West Virginia represented the other atypical State in the region. Heavily affected by the decline in its mining and farming operations, it experienced actual losses in all but the professional, clerical, sales, and service groups; its most severe losses were among operatives, farmers, and farm workers.

The East South Central region differed considerably from the national pattern of occupational growth. While its total employed was almost static, it experienced above-average percent increases in managerial and clerical workers, craftsmen, operatives, and service workers, and it had greater than average percent losses in farmers and farm workers. Industrialization of the region and changes in farming operations combined to increase its share of all but the professional, sales, and farm groups.

The West South Central region, which approximated national growth in the total employed, exceeded it in many occupations. The percent gain in the managerial group was more than double the national average, and in operatives more than 321⁄2 times the average. Percent losses in farm employment were substantially higher. Continued industrial development, especially in Texas, which accounted for more than half of the region's workers, strongly influenced regional growth. As a result of the changes, the region increased its share of virtually all nonfarm occupations.

The Mountain region, consisting of many small States, showed some of the highest percent gains in the various occupations, far exceeding national growth in all nonfarm occupations. In contrast to the national loss of laborers, this and the Pacific region showed an actual increase. Moreover, the losses in farm employment were considerably below the national average. Obviously, its share of all occupations therefore increased. While the numbers involved were small and the numerical shifts therefore not significant in the national total, the gains clearly delineate the changing character of the economy in this region.

The Pacific region, also one of the three fastest growing regions, closely paralleled the occupational growth pattern of the Mountain region, its rates of occupational growth far exceeding those of the Nation as a whole. California's growth, with its phenomenal increase in professional workers, including scientists, engineers, and technicians, as well as substantial growth in managerial and clerical workers, greatly increased the region's share of employed workers in these occupations and in most other occupational groups strongly affected by population growth.

The impact upon the geographic distribution of workers in the major occupational groups, though significant in pointing the nature and direction of employment change, is measurable only in small percentage points. For example, the three fastest growing regions (Pacific, Mountain, and South Atlantic) taken together increased their share of the Nation's professional workers by 3.7 percentage points during the 1950's. In 1960, they accounted for 30.9 percent of total professional employment as compared with 27.2 percent a decade earlier. The combined share of operatives of the three Northeast regions (New England,

and the managerial group also improved its position in the occupational structure in contrast to the national pattern. The two South Central regions differed from the national pattern most noticeably in that the proportions of both craftsmen and operatives in regional employment increased significantly, while the proportion of farmers and farm workers dropped much more precipitously than in the Nation. The West North Central region also differed in much the same way as the South Central region, but to a lesser degree. The percentage of operatives among the employed increased, while nationally it decreased, and the percentage of farm laborers in regional employment dropped more sharply than it did nationally. Changes in occupational composition in the East North Central and Middle Atlantic regions followed national changes closely, except that the percentage of craftsmen among the employed in these regions declined in contrast to their slight rise in national employment. Changes in New England also followed national changes except that craftsmen just maintained instead of improving their position, and operatives lost heavily to other occupational groups in the region (3.2 percentage points). The chief divergence from the national pattern of the South Atlantic region was in the far more precipitous decline of farmers and farm managers, as in the South Central regions, and in the relative rise rather than decline of the nonfarm managerial group.

An observation that the occupational profiles of the various regions increased in similarity stems logically from the increased percentages of nonfarm workers in farm areas and the decreased percentages of operatives, clerical workers, and

other workers in highly industrialized areas. It is borne out by a closer examination of the percentages which the various occupation groups represent of total employment within the regions. An analysis of the dispersion of these percents in 1960 as compared with 1950 showed that the standard deviations from the averages of regional percentages were smaller in 1960 for most occupation groups. This was true for most nonfarm occupations as well as for the two farm groups. For example, in 1950 the standard deviation for the craftsmen group was 1.69 percent as compared with 1.09 in 1960. The range of regional percentages of craftsmen in total employment narrowed from 10.8-15.8 percent in 1950 to 12.315.5 percent in 1960, as shown in table 4. For operatives, the standard deviation was 4.57 percent in 1950 as compared with 3.31 in 1960, and for clerical workers, 2.12 percent as compared with 1.87. The respective ranges for these groups also narrowed from 1950 to 1960. The prospect of continued change in the same direction in the future has far-reaching implications for worker supply and demand, worker mobility, and the Nation's manpower planning.

The standard deviations from the unweighted averages of regional percentages for the various occupation groups were:

Professional, technical, and kindred workers.
Managers, officials, and proprietors, except farm.
Clerical and kindred workers...
Sales workers.-----.

Craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers.
Operatives and kindred workers..
Laborers, except farm and mine..

Service workers, except private household.
Private household workers...
Farmers and farm managers.
Farm laborers and farm foremen...

Standard

The Consumer in

the Soviet Union and the United States

JANET G. CHAPMAN*

EDITOR'S NOTE.-The following article is the author's summary of portions of a paper prepared under the auspices of the RAND Corp. for presentation at the Conference on the Economics of Soviet Industrialization at Princeton, N.J., in May 1961. The complete paper will be published early in 1963 by the Harvard University Press, together with other studies by experts on the economy of Russia, in a volume titled "Economic Trends in the Soviet Union," edited by Abram Bergson and Simon Kuznets. This summary is printed with the permission of the Harvard University Press and the RAND Corp. The reader is referred to the full version for detailed explanations of some of the figures in this article.

THE REAL INCOME of the average Soviet citizen today is but one-quarter to one-third of that of the average American. Indeed, insofar as it can be measured, the Russian's income today is very close to that of the American of 1890. These comparisons include the medical care, education, and related services provided by the government-here referred to as communal services. What do these overall figures mean in terms of the goods and services which Americans and Russians consume?

The per capita output or consumption in physical terms of a number of important consumer goods in the Soviet Union in 1958 and in the United States in both 1890 and 1958 are shown in the accompanying table. The figures shown for food products suggest that the Russian today undoubtedly consumes sufficient calories-probably

more than the American-but that a very high proportion of his calories is supplied by bread and potatoes. He appears to consume about three times as much bread and potatoes as the American of today but eats less than half the meat, less than one-third of the eggs, and less than three-fourths as much milk as the Amercian of either period. He partially compensates for this by a larger consumption of fish. Soviet consumption of clothing in general is less than that of the American of either period. In comparison with the American of today, the Russian appears to purchase annually about 60 percent as much cloth (as such or in clothing, bedding, etc.), less than half the number of socks and stockings, and not much over half the number of shoes.

As far as housing space is concerned, lack of comparable data precludes precise comparisons, but the table at least suggests the possible magnitude of the difference. The estimated Soviet occupancy rate of 3.2 persons per room is four times American occupancy today.

The Soviet urban family characteristically lives in one room of an apartment, sharing kitchen and toilet facilities with other families. The Soviet government has only recently begun to build self-contained apartments for separate families, and these are very modest.2 The Soviet household is very meagerly furnished with utilities, as compared with today's American household, though it is often better equipped than the American household in 1890, before the era of electricity. Most Soviet urban dwellings are now equipped with electricity. With respect to other utilities, Moscow and Leningrad appear to be beginning to approach current American urban standards, but other Soviet cities lag far behind and the Soviet farm worker lives largely in a preutility world.

*Consultant to the Economics Department, RAND Corp.

1 "Today" generally in this article means 1958, the latest year for which relevant data were available when the research was done. The comparison is based on per capita household consumption plus communal services from the national income accounts for both countries. The American figures are based on Simon Kuznets' series "flow of goods to consumers," part of which is published in Capital in the American Economy-Its Formation and Financing (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1961). The Soviet figure in current rubles is from Nancy Nimitz, Soviet National Income and Product, 1956-1958 (Santa Monica, RAND Corp., RM-3112-PR, June 1962), p. 11. For the comparison, use is made of the ruble/dollar ratios for consumer goods in Norman Kaplan and Eleanor Wainstein, An Addendum to Previous USSR-US Retail Price Comparisons (Santa Monica, RAND Corp., RM1906, May 1957).

See V. Lagutenko, I. Loveika, and others, "Prisoners of Abstraction," Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XII (1960), No. 13, pp. 26-27.

10 Narodnoye, pp. 272–273.

11 Soviet Economic Growth: A Comparison With the United States (U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 1957), p. 33.

12 Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1959, op. cit., p. 806. 13 1900.

14 Computed from the 1955 figure for dwelling space in Abram Bergson's The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 316, and the percent increase in total floor space between 1955 and 1958 shown in Narodnoye, p. 641.

18 The lesser figure is an estimate for 1950 by Louis Winnick in American Housing and Its Use (New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1957), p. 1. The higher figure is from Soviet Economic Growth, op. cit., p. 112.

16 Timothy Sosnovy, "The Soviet Housing Situation Today," Soviet Studies, Vol. XI (1959), p. 5.

The Soviet consumer does not have nearly as many consumer durables as the American of today, as may be seen in the table. He is better off in this respect than the American of 1890, who had none of the currently important consumer durables since most of them were not then produced. The 1890 American household, however, may well have been better equipped with the simpler household durables and semidurables than is the present Russian home. American consumers today buy over twice as many radios, 7 times as many television sets, almost 9 times as many washing machines, 11 times as many refrigerators, 17 times as many vacuum cleaners, and 83 times as many cars as Russian consumers. Russian consumers buy almost as many bicycles and more motorcycles and sewing machines than the Americans.

17 Figure for 1958 is an estimate for 1950 by Timothy Sosnovy, in The Housing Problem in the Soviet Union (New York, Research Program on the U.S.S.R., 1954), p. 108. For 1890, Sosnovy's estimate for 1950 is adjusted by Winnick's estimate that between 1900 and 1950, the number of persons per room declined by 15 to 20 percent, op. cit., p. 8.

18 Source for U.S.S.R. figures is Narodnoye, pp. 299-300, 719-720; for U.S. figures, Historical Statistics of the United States, op. cit., p. 491; Statistical Abstract of the United States, op. cit., pp. 558, 825, 852; and Soviet Economic Growth, op. cit., p. 112.

19 Sales to the public of radio receiving sets and output of room loudspeakers. 20 1956.

21 Sales to public.

22 Sales including exports.

23 Output adjusted for foreign trade.

24 1955.

25 Sales to public and collective farms.

26 Source for U.S.S.R. figures is Narodnoye, pp. 602-603, and V. Kriazhov and M. Markovich, "The Time Budget and Measures to Improve the Living Conditions of the Working People," Problems of Economics, December 1959, pp. 52-53; for U.S. figures, Historical Statistics of the United States, op. cit., p. 488, and Statistical Abstract of the United States, op. cit., p. 825.

25 Number of sets in working order in homes and automobiles. 28 Number of homes owning one or more of the appliances.

29 Urban RSFSR (largest of the constituent republics, comprising 72 percent of the land area). Maximum possible stock estimated at 69 per 1,000 population in 1965 by Marshall I. Goldman, "The Soviet Standard of Living, and Ours," Foreign Affairs, July 1960, p. 636.

30 Maximum possible stock in 1965 estimated by Goldman, ibid, at 43 per 1,000 population.

most of the modern consumer durables have only recently become available to the private Soviet household, the lag behind the American level is even greater when measured by stocks of durables owned. Americans, for example, own over 4 times as many radios, 21 times as many television sets, and almost 52 times as many washing machines as Russians. When quality differences are taken into account, the disparity is even larger.

From the comparisons made so far, it is evident that basic necessities make up a very large part of total Soviet consumption. In this, the Soviet consumption pattern somewhat resembles the American pattern of 1890 but differs strikingly from the American pattern of today. In food, as has been seen, Soviet consumption compares favorably quantitatively if not qualitatively with the