The Soviet Household Under the Old Regime

Acknowledgements; Sources; Prologue; 1. Introduction: economics of the Soviet urban household in the 1970s; 2. Private sources of income of the Soviet urban household; 3. Soviet household saving; 4. Inequality of earnings, household income and wealth in the Soviet Union in the 1970s; 5. The distributive effects of the Social Consumption Fund in the Soviet Union; 6. The size and the structure of population in poverty in the Soviet Union; 7. Earning differentials by sex in the Soviet Union: a first look; 8. Work and family roles of Soviet women: historical trends and cross-section analysis; Appendix: demographic and economic characteristics of the sample and of the Soviet urban population; References; Index.

"Everyone interested in the comparative behavior of households as they react to their economic environment will find these studies highly informative." Journal of Economic Literature "This volume illustrates the best of the old Sovietology as practiced by 'pros.' Its usefulness will grow over time--mainly for historians, as the title suggests. The title echoes many books that appeared after 1917 describing an earlier 'old regime.'" Slavic Review "...will be of interest to microeconomists generally, as a study of behavior in a different economic environment, to labor economists and economic demographers, to those interested in the role of women in the economy, and of course to Soviet and post-Soviet specialists." Joseph M. Nowakowski, Southern Economic Journal 'Ofer and Vinokur's studies show the power of carefully drawn and analyzed samples. Working with a far-from-ideal sample -- Soviet emigrants to Israel -- they were able to reweight the sample with the result that their sample came remarkably close to replicating the basic published characteristics of the Soviet population such as average wages...Ofer and Vinokur show that major progress in social-science research is not made cheaply or overnight. These results show what a decade or more of careful research can yield. Unfortunately, there are too few such research projects that combine such patience, perseverance, and theoretical and methodological competence." Paul Gregory, Journal of Economic History